


The Butterfly Effect

by Burch



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: ; ), Adora is horde scum, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Catra and Adora are both useless lesbians who aren't willing to make the first move, Catra joins the rebellion, F/F, FUCK shadoweaver, Friends to Enemies, Graphic description of scarring, I changed how Micah died by accident so now you all have to live with it, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Let! Catra! Say! F@$&!, Memory Alteration, Minor bad language, Slow Burn, So there's that underlying tension for you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2019-09-29 20:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17210468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burch/pseuds/Burch
Summary: If anyone was going to leave the Horde, it was always going to be Catra.Adora was the golden child, the prodigy, the poster girl - why would she leave that behind? Catra, however, has been beat down her whole life. So, when she stumbles across an opportunity to join the rebellion, she finds herself asking a question that she'd never considered before: was there really anything for her back in the Horde?





	1. The Sword in the Vines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is, folks! The start to a very bumpy roller coaster of a fic.
> 
> First off, thanks to my two lovely Betas, @raikou-galaxy (that's a Tumblr) and Salora! A lot of the better phrasing, metaphors and similes came from these two. They also purged it of the many, many typos and grammatical errors.
> 
> My second thank you is to the Tumblr post/prompt which inspired this fic.
> 
>  
> 
> Now, without any further adieu, here it is!

At this point, there was no point in even trying to be subtle.  

Catra, curled up on the end of the cot, could feel Adora’s every breath. If her toes twitched, she knew. If she rolled over, she’d shift her body to follow suit so that she would still be touching as much of her skin as possible. That’s why she knew instantly that Adora was getting up and out of bed at one o’clock in the damn morning. No matter how quiet or smooth she was about it, Catra knew.  

Adora made it all of two steps away from the bed before Catra piped up. She didn’t hear the footsteps, of course; Adora was being especially quiet so that the other cadets wouldn’t be woken, but Catra knew exactly what she’d do, and when she’d do it.  

“Adora.”  

It was a half drawled, half muttered word that was almost lost to the mass of blankets around Catra’s mouth, but it was enough to make Adora stop and look back. Catra hadn’t moved a muscle. Her eyes were still closed, and anyone else might have thought she was still sleeping. Adora knew better than that, though.  

“It’s alright, Catra. Go back to sleep.” Adora said, her whispers sounding so large in the near silence that engulfed the room.  

Naturally, Catra did exactly the opposite, pushing herself up and slinging her legs over so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Armed with a yawn and quizzical eyes, she wiped drool from her mouth before simply staring at Adora.  

“Where are you off to?”  

The question was simple, but the answer made Adora feel ridiculous. To anyone else, she would have lied, but she could tell Catra.  

“I’ve... gotta go find that sword.” Adora said, turning to face Catra fully now.  

“Why?”  

Adora looked down to her Horde-assigned boots and bit her bottom lip. Catra didn’t focus on it too much – she didn’t want to get distracted in that luxury right now. Besides, even if she could, her eyes were bleary and half lidded, so she was barely able to focus on anything more than shapes as it was.  

“I wish I knew, Catra. I wish I could put my finger on it, but there’s something drawing me to that sword.”  

“That’s stupid.” Catra said, snorting as she wiped the sleep from her eyes. Adora smiled slightly, but Catra noticed it was a sad, almost mournful smile.  

She hadn’t seen a smile like that in a long time.  

Adora slowly walked over to the bed and sat next to Catra, half turning her body to face her.  

“This feels bigger than the Horde.”  

Catra simply nodded slowly, then transitioned to shaking her head at an equally lazy pace.  

“No, it isn’t. Go back to sleep, you’ve got Force Captain Orientation tomorrow that your nerd ass wants to go to.”  

“Catra, I’m going to find this sword.”  

Adora stood up and Catra’s eyes suddenly cleared up. She could see the burning passion in Adora’s eyes, the torn curiosity and the need for answers. She could see the decisiveness in her tense muscles, her set jaw and narrowed eyes. This was already a done deal, and nothing Catra could say would deter her from this task.  

It was important to Adora, so it was important to Catra.  

“You have an orientation thing to go to,” Catra reminded quietly as she slowly forced herself to stand up, doing her best to stretch away the heavy, lethargic feeling in her legs.  

“Yeah. I’ll just have to go tired.”  

“Go back to bed, Adora. I’ll go look for your dumb sword,” Catra said as she rested a hand on Adora’s shoulder, half to steady herself and half to reassure her. Adora almost looked shocked for a moment, but that soon gave in to a tired look of -  

Well, Catra was going to say love, but realistically it was probably a more platonic affection. Anyone would be smiling like an angel if they’d been told that they can have more time sleeping.  

“You sure?”  

“Yeah, why not, I guess,” Catra mumbled. How could anyone turn down a voice that soft and eyes that gentle?  

\---  

The Fright Zone had always been hot. Catra loved the heat. She liked the weird noises and ominous clangs made by the towering, industrial infrastructure less, but it was an alright trade-off. She could live with it.  

When she drove her stolen skiff (keys courtesy of Force Captain Adora) to the edge of the Whispering Woods, she found out that she wasn’t that big a fan of the cold.  

Had it been this cold last time she was here?  

She shook her head, certain that it was just the chill of the night. She shut off the skiff, careful to put the key in her pocket as she looked over the edge of the woods, searching for where they had been yesterday. The woods had probably shifted, so it was a near impossible task, but if Adora wanted the sword Catra would have to find a way to make it possible.  

And, quite frankly, standing around and simply looking at the weird trees simply wouldn’t do, so with a sigh and a mouthful of gritted teeth, Catra trudged in to the Whispering Woods. She walked in a straight line, eyes set dead ahead as she tried to block out the cold that was creeping in to her bones.  

Stupid Adora wanting this stupid sword. It had better be the best sword that Catra had ever seen, she complained silently, to be worth wanting this badly. She hated how Adora could make her want something just by wanting it herself. She hated how she’d go out of her way just to see the smile that crept over Adora’s face, even though -  

Catra stopped suddenly.  

She cocked her head to the side, ears perked up and listening intently. She heard the noise again: a twig snapping, and in a completely different direction to the direction she’d been kicking pebbles in.  

What sort of sane person would be out in the forest this late at night?  

“Boooooow! This is the third time your thingy has turned off! How are we meant to find the First Ones’ tech if our tracker doesn’t work!” The high-pitched whiney voice of a young girl made Catra physically flinch as the shrill voice pierced the routine silence of the night.  

“Don’t worry! I still work, and I’m a far better tracker than this!” The equally enthusiastic reply was somehow said in an even more annoying voice than the first one. How could anyone have this much energy at such unholy hours?  

Catra skulked forward slowly, following the light bickering of the only other souls in the forest until she reached a clearing. That was when she was able to fully assess her prey.  

The first was a girl. Gosh, this girl was aware that there were colours other than pink, right? She was on the shorter side and clumpy, with lavender hair that was stuck up at odd angles that looked like a bird had tried to make a nest out of cotton candy. She had an odd cape on that merged in to a bodysuit, which was again, purple and pink. Catra almost would have called her cute, but Adora had already set the bar high when it came to cuteness.  

The second was a slightly taller, broad shouldered boy who was wearing a very classy set of armour. Well, he was wearing a single golden shoulder pad, which was impractical as the rest of his body wasn’t shielded at all. His midriff was just out there, completely unshielded by his crop top. It was almost as though he was _begging_ to be sliced in the spleen. He was, however, armed with a golden longbow and a quiver of arrows; upon seeing this, Catra checked back to the first girl to see if she was packing any weapons.  

She was not.  

The third thing she saw was a sword. It was buried in to the ground like the forbidden story of Excalibur, with thick, indigo vines that offered an oddly beautiful contrast to the dim glow that the blue blade seemed to emanate. The hilt and pommel were both golden, with a gem set in to the hilt that gave the entire sword a regal look. The winged hilt added another layer if grandeur to the sword, which had to be the fanciest weapon Catra had ever seen. Every weapon in the Fright Zone was practical and generic, with no individuality to them. The weapon in front of her wasn’t just a weapon; it was a statement, an accessory, a show of power.     

It had to be the sword.  

“Bow! Look!” Catra’s head snapped to the side just in time to see the pink one point to the sword and bounce up and down excitedly before -  

Suffering Sappho.  

The pink one disappeared, leaving behind a cloud of sparkles and glitter, before reappearing next to the sword. No wonder she didn’t have a weapon – she could _teleport_. Which meant she was likely a princess. That, in turn, Catra reasoned, meant she was an expert at martial arts. After all, the ability to teleport around your opponent, overcoming the usual restrictions that came with hand to hand combat, was an incredibly strong one and she’d have to be an idiot not to have any training. It made her unpinnable, immune to deadlocks and nigh on uncounterable as she could simply teleport to the most awkward places to defend yourself from.  

Sparkles was clearly dangerous, and would have to be watched.  

“First Ones’ tech! Mum’s going to be so proud!”  

Catra’s eyebrows raised higher than she thought was possible. Beautiful, brilliant, boundless Adora. No wonder Blondie wanted the damn sword so badly – the rebellion wanted it, which meant that it could be used as leverage against them. If nothing else, denying them the opportunity to have it would certainly weaken their position. Bringing that home would get you in to Hordak’s good books immediately.  

The boy, Bow, walked up and started examining the sword while Catra sized the two of them up.  

It would be two on one. Catra could win a two on one, especially if she tried to take out Arrow Boy first. His speciality seemed to be at range, so pushing in to his personal space and forcing him to fight hand to hand would be her best shot. After all, the likelihood of him being able to hold his own against Catra in a mêlée were low.  

But Sparkles could teleport. Catra would have to take the Golden Boy out _quickly_ , with brutal efficiency. The chance that Catra could take the pink one on in a fight were low, if she was correct about her martial art assumptions – and she had every reason to believe she would be.  

So perhaps combat wasn’t the best approach here. What if she took out Crop Top, grabbed the sword and ran? But then Bird Hair would just teleport to catch up with her, unless Catra could lose her in the trees. It was the Whispering Woods, after all, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.  

Assuming the weight of the sword wouldn’t slow her down too much.  

Catra shifted her gaze back on to the duo. Shorty was tugging at the sword, desperately trying to pull it out of the earth as the other kid kept on pacing around the sword, marking this and reading that.  

And then, with one final tug and a flash of brilliant white light, the sword was pulled free and the girl fell backwards on to her ass. Catra couldn’t help but snicker at her and her cute little pout as she stood back up and dusted herself off.  

However, Sparkles did need both hands to lift the sword, and even then she seemed to be struggling. That would be a problem, because it also meant that _Catra_ would struggle to lift the sword. She reckoned she was stronger than the Princess (after all, that stomach, while cute in its softness, had nothing on Adora’s toned abs), but the Princess couldn’t be that much of a weakling.  

Catra had devised a plan, then. Rush in, deck Heart Guy, grab the sword off of Sparkles and rush off and hide in the woods.  

She crouched down, tensing her legs as her heart began to rush, adrenaline pumping through her veins in anticipation as the woodland sounds were drowned out by the beating of her heart. Catra allowed herself a moment to appreciate that there really wasn’t anything like the thrill of the hunt, but in that moment everything changed drastically.  

A creature she had never seen before barrelled in to the clearing from the right. It was large, with a chitin covered corpus that had some sort of blue light overflowing from the chinks in its armour. It had far too many smooth, blue eyes, and half a dozen legs that ended with sharp spear points that drove deep in to the ground as it moved. It was easily ten times her height; there was no way she would win in a fight against it. Whatever _it_ was. 

Luckily for her, there was no way the other two would win in a fight against it, either.  

Bow threw himself to the side, out of the way of the charging scarab as Sparkles followed suit by teleporting next to him, crouching in the dirt as she screamed. Both of them were screaming and wailing and almost, it seemed, crying, which Catra put aside in her memory to laugh about later.  

For the time being, she had an opening, and by God did she intend to use it.  

She pounced forward, clearing the space between the trees and the sword in one fell swoop. She grabbed the sword with both hands, preparing to heft up its weight, before finding out rather quickly that she’d overcompensated far too much. It swung upwards and over her head with ease, the force of Catra’s pull threatening to bowl her over. Quickly, she let go of the sword with one hand, holding it solely in her right hand so that she didn’t knock herself more off balance than she already was, but that too was a mistake; the one-handed grip only threw her more off balance. 

She’d tugged upwards with far too much force and fallen over. That Sparkles kid really was a weakling, or, at the very least, a lot weaker than her.  

Suddenly, Sparkles was on top of her. How did she get – oh, right, she could teleport. She was yelling “Horde Soldier!” at the top of her voice, over and over, with a look of undiluted rage as she brought a fist down to punch her. Catra tugged her left arm from under her with surprising ease and deflected the blow. Her forehead furrowed with confusion – that should have been a lot harder than it was. With her right hand firmly holding on to the sword, she grabbed Sparkles’ stomach with her left hand and threw her off of herself, rolling into the action so that she was on her stomach. From there, she quickly propped herself up – the floor was not a great place to be in a fight.  

Halfway through getting up, however, Sparkles came back around and teleported on to her back, pulling and tugging at her hair. Despite the fact that whatever she was trying to do really did hurt, it felt more like a kid pulling a tantrum than an actual attack from an organised enemy. It was in that moment Catra had a revelation:  

This Sparkles kid really didn’t know how to fight.  

Catra quickly analysed the scene while doing her best to ignore the pathetic gremlin tugging at her hair. Arrows was distracting the massive scarab while shouting motivational messages that didn’t quite make it to where she stood, which was good for her because it left her with just Pinky to deal with.  

Catra reached her left arm over her left shoulder, grabbed a bundle of Sparkles’ incredibly soft cape and pulled her over her shoulder with as much force as she could muster, slamming her in to the ground. She skidded across the mud, dust clouds rising up from where she hit the ground. Catra took a second to look at her, evaluate just how fast she would get back up and teleport, and judge how many hits she could take.  

She counted one second.  

Two seconds.  

And then, with the sword firmly in her right hand and her claws sliding out of her left, she darted her left foot forward and pivoted around, her left claws catching Sparkles’ face just as she teleported on to what would have been her back.  

Predictable.  

Three gashes appeared across Pink’s face as she was sent tumbling back in to the dirt. They were long, but superficial, with only pinpricks of blood escaping from her veins. She hit the ground, back arched as she gasped for breath, blinking away tears that began to form in her eyes as she instantly brought a hand up to her face.  

She definitely wasn’t a fighter.  

Well, that solved that. Catra could have pressed the advantage, and almost wanted to, almost wanted to feel the princess blood running down her claws and chin and -  

But she had other things to be doing, such as running away from the huge scarab monster.  

Just as she turned and began to run for the trees, she was blindsided by a golden arrow. It was surprisingly not sharp, Catra thought, until she realised that it had turned in to a net. She hit the floor, shouting in surprise as the sword went flying out of her grasp. She tried to stand up, but her legs and arms were tangled in rope.  

She sliced the rope off of her arms, giving her just enough leeway to shred the rope around her legs to pieces because every second she was on the floor was a second closer to death. Finally, she managed to prop herself up and stand up, but she’d failed to notice what had been going on in the meantime.  

The scarab, attracted most likely by her scream, was right above her.  

The teleporter was finally back on her feet behind her, with the archer next to her. Catra could hear him cock an arrow, almost feel the tension mounting as he pulled the drawstring back. She tensed her legs, preparing to jump. She’d have to pounce at the exact right second to avoid both the scarab and the arrow, but she could do it -  

And she did, darting forward behind the middle leg of the scarab on its right side as she heard the twang of the bowstring and the unmistakable whistling of an arrow. Catra swiped at the chitinous leg, but her claws merely bounced off of it, not being able to find purchase in the smooth, hard shell. She reared back for a second strike, and suddenly hesitated.  

Where did that arrow go?  

It should have gone past her, she realised – unless the arrow wasn’t aimed at her at all, and was aimed at the scarab. But the scarab seemed unaffected, so it likely just bounced off, but it still begged the question: why didn’t they try and kill her while she was vulnerable?  

Catra took a gamble and jumped out from the underbelly of the scarab. Bow was shooting arrows at it recklessly: shooting, diving and rolling out of the way before shooting it again and repeating. The arrows didn’t seem to be doing anything, but he kept at it. Sparkles was on top of the scarab itself, pummelling both fists ineffectively in to the back of its head.  

The scarab had forgotten Catra existed.  

They’d... distracted it. For her. She could run away. The sword was still lying on the ground, unattended.  

Acting purely on instinct, Catra secured her first priority: getting the sword. The sword firmly in her hand, she then raced towards the woods. She heard Bow and the other one start to yell something or the other, but she ignored them. Instead, she jumped at the nearest tree, the claws on her feet digging in to the bark as she made it three steps up it before pushing off in to a backflip.  

She twisted in the air as she catapulted herself towards the scarab, and with all of her weight brought the sword down on to one of its eyes. It didn’t pop or burst like she expected; instead, it gave a devastating crack and surged with electricity. Catra hit the floor and, before she knew it, the eye had exploded entirely, taking out the scarab’s brain in the process.  

It slumped to the floor, dead.  

Catra allowed herself time for a single breath before forcing herself to her feet. Sparkles had teleported to Bow’s side, one arm draped around him in an effort to support her as they both caught their breath. Catra merely faced them both and raised her sword. 

“So, do I have to hand your asses to you again, or are we good?”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks!
> 
> A touch of a cliff-hanger ending, I admit, but aren't those the best type? If you liked this chapter, I'd ask you to post a comment, please. They really motivate me to keep on writing. I don't mind if it's a short one, a keysmash or even some constructive criticism - feel free to pop anything down in to the comments section and I'll try to get back to you at some point.


	2. The Seige on Thaymor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! It's me, and I'm back again!
> 
> So, first off, thank you to my amazing beta, Anna! I wouldn't have been able to get this out without her. She caught more than a few embarrasing typos. If you want to catch her, she's AKarnstein on AO3 and @thankfullyimgay on tumblr. 
> 
> (As an aside, I'm beta reading her catradora fic in process and boy. You guys are going to love it when it comes out! Angst, y'all.)
> 
> Secondly, well, this is an interesting one. Read on and you'll see what I mean.
> 
> Enjoy!

Sparkles looked to Bow and Bow looked to Sparkles. 

“No, we’re good, actually,” he started, but was soon cut off by Shimmer agreeing with him with  a - 

“Yeah, we’d like to keep our own butts, please.” And once that had started, the two were speaking at a rate Catra could never have predicted. They were tumbling over their words before they even left their mouths, eager to avoid any further conflict. 

“That is to say,” Bow followed up, “We’d like to avoid a fight.” 

“Not that we couldn’t fight you!” 

“Oh, we totally could!” 

“Just not now. We like our butts.” 

“And your butt!” 

“Yes!” Pinkie agreed, “We do!” 

“And in fact -” 

“Stop digging yourself out of a hole.” Catra said, interrupting them both midflow. They both stopped at once, simultaneously taking a breath as one nodded slowly and the other placed a hand on their hips awkwardly. Catra somewhat reluctantly lowered the sword, not yet sheathing it, but relaxing to give her arm a break. 

“The name’s Bow, by the way!” Bow said, holding his hand out for Catra to shake. Catra was already half faced away, ready to walk off, but she stopped and allowed herself to shoot him a glance. 

He looked so hopeful. 

His eyes were sparkling and his posture was open, as though it hadn’t occurred to him in the slightest that Catra could take his hand and throw him ten feet behind them both. He was leant forward, with the whitest teeth and a smile that was almost infectious. The glance turned in to a look which turned in to a glare as Catra ignored his hand. 

“Catra,” she said, almost spitting the word at him. 

“And I’m Glimmer!” Sparkles, whose name was apparently Glimmer, had teleported to her right. Catra tensed instinctively – it felt like an ambush, like they could double team her, but then she remembered: they were both far too incompetent to pull that off. 

“So,” she continued, “are you going back to the Evil Horde with our sword?” Her smile was genuine, it seemed, but with something else behind it. Excitement? It looked as though she was trying to contain something that couldn’t be contained, and the radiance of it was just shining out of her eyes. 

It looked like when Adora got excited about a new training drill, except Adora would gush to her. Shimmer was hiding it, for now, just like Adora might hide it from stupid _Kyle_. It looked like Catra was the butt of the joke, or she hadn't earned the right to whatever was exciting - 

Of course she hadn’t earned the right. She just threw her halfway across the grove. They were her enemy. Why did she care what Sparkles thought? It only mattered if it was an ambush, and that was that. 

“You, uh, going to answer that, or is it classified information?” Bow said, snapping her out of her temporary reverie. Catra scowled at him, and then at Glimmer, noticing they both looked very awkward. 

“It’s not your sword,” Catra said. “I saw it first. And yes, I am going back to the Horde.” 

There was a silence for a few seconds that was brimming with tension as Glimmer bounced from one foot to the other, and Bow just stared at her. 

“Well,” Catra said, “I’ll see you two losers – well, hopefully never,” and with that she turned and walked away. 

Well, she began to. 

She took two steps in a direction before she stopped and attempted to orientate herself. She could see the vines where the sword came from, but she couldn’t see where she was hiding in the shadows before that. She saw the corpse of the scarab, the rubble of what used to be it’s head scattered across the ground, and where Glimmer had been thrown in to the ground, but her hiding spot just wasn’t there. Neither, Catra realised, was the tree she ran up to finish the scarab off. None of the trees had claw marks on them. 

The Whispering Woods had shifted. 

Catra turned back around and faced a now laughing Glimmer and a rather smug Bow. 

“Which way is out?” 

\--- 

They had been walking for two hours. 

In that time, Glimmer and Bow hadn’t shut up. Apparently, the Bow kid grew up in these woods, and was one of the few people who could actually navigate them, which was either very lucky for her or extremely unlucky, if she was being led directly towards an ambush, but what choice did she have? 

Besides, listening to Glimmer talk wasn’t the worst thing in the world. She was mostly gushing about how cool Catra’s fighting style was. Well, she had been. She had started talking about something else, so Catra had tuned her cute voice out. It was enough effort just to traipse through all the undergrowth, let alone keep up with whatever it is the two were talking about this time. 

“And this is Thaymor!” Bow announced as he pulled back a particularly thick branch to present them with a village. It looked... ordinary. There were huts with little thatched roofs, and people scurrying about going to do their daily business. There were no barracks, no marches, no troops or troop formations or claxons or shouting guards. The only shouting was the shouting of kids as one tagged another, zipping from one side of a market square to the other, his pursuer hot on his tail. 

It looked enchantingly mundane. 

“Where the hell are we?” Catra said, looking to Bow with a horrified expression. “You said you were taking me back to the Horde.” 

“We are,” Bow said as he walked through the opening and down to Thaymor, threatening to leave Catra behind. “Think of this as a little... detour.” 

“A detour?” Catra jogged up to keep pace with him as Glimmer hurtled down the road, well ahead of either of them. “I didn’t ask for a detour, I -” 

“You’re in no position to bargain,” Bow said, cutting Catra off with an uncharacteristic display of strength that was paired with a very on-brand smile. “Besides, the festivities are about to start. Live a little!” 

“Festivities?” Catra slowed to a walk as they approached the square. Glimmer appeared to her left in a cloud of sparkles and threw her a cape. A long, blue, hideous cape.

“No.” 

“Yes!” Glimmer immediately shouted back. “You’ll stand out like a sore thumb if you don’t!” 

Catra slowly and reluctantly draped it around herself, indulging her dramatic side by allowing it to billow in the wind slightly. 

“You look less like a Horde soldier now. Maybe they won’t kill you on site. You just need something to tie it all together. Like, a, uh, flower!” 

“Yeah, no, the flower is what’s going to really make them think I’m not a Horde soldier.” 

Glimmer leant down and plucked out a pink flower. It was strikingly beautiful, with three long, slender petals that seemed to flow out of the flower as though they were water. Glimmer reached up, standing on her tiptoes as she reached towards Catra’s ear, leaning a little too close towards Catra as she did so that she could feel her breath on her skin before she jammed the flower behind Catra’s ear. 

“Ow!” 

“There you go!” Glimmer took a step back and appreciated her handiwork with a ridiculous grin. “It brings it all together.” 

Catra reached up and took the flower out, crushing it in her hand as she threw it to the side. 

“Let’s get what we need to get and leave.” 

Glimmer looked – well, she looked sad, but not for long, because she sniffed the air and smelt what Catra had been smelling since she got here. 

“Well, we should at least try the cake before we leave,” Bow said as he walked towards a vendor of some sort. He handed over a few coins – were they golden? The Horde had used rationing for Catra's entire life, so she didn’t quite know whether what Bow was using was worth a lot or a little, but they were certainly gold and that tended to mean expensive, right? Bow was walking back now, though, and was handing two chunks of bread out to both her and Glimmer. Glimmer grabbed hers and started biting in to it immediately. 

Catra reluctantly took hers and looked at it. It was... flakier than bread, with a deep brown outside and an inside that, when Catra tore it, was a soft golden colour. It left crumbs everywhere, and it smelt sickly sweet. 

It was definitely poisoned. 

Catra handed it back to Bow as he bit in to his own. 

“You don’t want the cake?” He said through a mouthful of cake, splattering Catra with crumbs that fired off out of his mouth at an unbelievable pace. 

“The hell is cake?” 

“You’ve never had cake?” Glimmer said, nearly screeching in to Catra’s ear as she choked on her cake. “You’ve got to try it.” 

“No, but I’ve also never been poisoned, so I’ll pass,” she said, thrusting the cake in to Bow’s hands. 

Bow thrust the cake right back in to Catra’s hands. 

“This is more than a food – it's a spiritual experience. You’ve got to try the cake.” 

“If by spiritual experience you mean that I’ll find out if there’s an afterlife, maybe,” Catra retaliated, thrusting the cake right back. 

“Look,” Bow said as he tore off a chunk of Catra’s cake, “I’ll show you it’s not poisoned. I’ll eat some myself. See?” 

Catra held the cake and slowly lifted it to her nose, sniffing it thoroughly. It... didn’t smell like any poison she’d smelt before, but that didn’t mean that it was off the hook, but Catra was hungry – it was almost lunch time and she hadn’t eaten anything since last night. 

She had more self control than this, though. She could go for three days without food or water and still be fine – the drills in the Fright Zone proved that, so she shouldn’t be succumbing to something as basic as fancy bread. 

And yet. 

Hesitantly, she took a bite. 

It... wasn’t bad. Some might even call it good. It was a little dry, and it stuck to the insides of her mouth and the dents in her teeth, but it did taste of those vanilla protein bars she used to have as treats in her ration packs. It wasn’t apple, sure, but it was still damn nice. She found herself going back for a second bite, and then a third, but she couldn’t compete with the dryness, and she reached out for a bottle of water or something - 

And Glimmer placed one in to her hand. 

“Here. You can use mine for the time being.” She smiled at her, understanding and compassionate, even when Catra sniffed at the water to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. She took a swig, passed it back and finished off the rest of her cake. 

“So?” Glimmer said, her face obnoxiously close to her own, “what did you think?” 

“It was alright,” Catra mumbled as she glanced away from Glimmer’s huge, sparkling eyes. 

“Ate it with real gusto for someone who thought it was ‘just alright’,” Bow said as he walked over to a nearby tree. It was young, its bark not yet cracked with age, and slender, so much so that it was bent over by the weight of the blue fruit it bore. It was right up next to a muddy ledge, bent over so that Bow could reach up and pluck the fruit out of its barren branches with ease. Again, he chucked one to her and one to Glimmer, who both caught it with ease. 

“Now, you can’t argue that this one’s poisoned, you _saw_ me pluck it,” he said with a grin.  

Catra looked at the fruit in her hand as the other two began to eat. It was a light, blue colour, and it didn’t smell of much – well, hers didn't, but she could smell Glimmer’s already half eaten one from where she was and it smelt strangely like watermelon mixed with apples. She took a bite through the skin, which was far tougher than it looked, and confirmed that it did indeed taste like a weird mix between apples and watermelon. 

It was nice. 

It dribbled down her chin and got caught in her fur in the way that a pear might have, on the rare occasion they would find a pear. Or, more realistically, they would steal a pear with Adora squirming next to her in the fear of getting caught. 

She wiped it off with the back of her sleeve, half hiding the smile that came with the memory.  

“Yeah, alright, that one was better.” 

“Are you – are you smiling?” Bow asked, his own grin melting in to his voice. 

“No!” 

“I mean, it kinda looked like a smile,” Glimmer said, chirping in with a slight snicker. 

“You need to get your eyes checked, because it wasn’t.” 

“Well, we -” 

And then he was cut off by the ground shaking. 

Catra looked around, but suddenly everyone was screaming, all at once. People were running in every direction – no, people were running in one direction, they were just using different routes to get there. She dropped her fruit to the ground and wiped her hand on her cloak, desperately trying to focus her mind. 

What was happening? 

The earth shook again, except this time Catra heard the explosion that came along with it. That – that was bad. She should run. She should definitely run, she wasn’t qualified to fight whatever heavy machinery that was - 

Except, she suddenly realised, only the Horde had heavy machinery like that. 

That was how Catra found herself defying every nerve, every ounce of better judgement and every siren in her brain that told her to run away from the fray. She pushed through the crowd, jostling from person to person until she broke free, stumbling forward until she found her footing and suddenly she was sprinting, her arms pumping as she tried to get closer to that sound. She vaulted over a hay bale and turned a corner around another small shack, and that was when she saw it. 

The Horde. 

It... wasn’t exactly a reassuring sight. She was, after all, facing down a dozen tanks and multiple unit transports with soldiers filing off of them. Just the size of it was oppressive, especially when compared to the village; Catra had never considered the Horde to be a steamroller, so to speak, but she was certainly having second thoughts about that. 

Bow came to a stop by her side, huffing and panting as he did. Glimmer simply teleported, but she seemed out of breath too – probably talking too much again, or just gobsmacked by the scene in front of her. Catra certainly was. 

“We - we’ve gotta slow ‘em down. Give them time to retreat,” Bow said, still out of breath. 

“What?” 

“Well, I don’t know if you’re on our side or not here, Catra, but that’s what me and Glimmer are doing,” Bow said, straightening his back and projecting an uneasy, fragile confidence. Catra turned to Glimmer for confirmation, which she gave in the form of a gulp and a shaky nod. Catra turned back towards the advancing line ahead of her. 

“Well, I asked you to get me back to the Horde and you did it. I'd say this is where we part ways.” Catra looked back to the two of them, who looked equal parts disappointed and frightened. “Tell you what, I’ll give you however long you want to scram. If I see you in the fray, though, don’t expect special treatment.” 

“Catra, wai-” Glimmer began, but the voice caught in her throat, the rest of her sentence uncompleted. 

And with that, she walked towards the Horde. 

\--- 

Adora was on the foremost tank. She was standing with her shoulders wide and back straight, hand on her hip as though she were the figurehead on the prow of a valiant ship. Her face, though – it looked torn, uncertain, uneasy. On the surface it seemed confident and ready, but Catra had learnt how to read the undercurrents of Adora’s sea of emotions a long time ago. 

“Hey, Adora.” Catra called as she sidled up to the side of the tank. 

Adora snapped out of her reverie as she looked down to Catra. She gazed at her and blinked as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. 

“Catra?” 

Catra hopped up and grabbed the railing on the side of the tank, pulling herself up to stand next to Adora. 

“Yup.” 

Before she knew it, she was pulled in to a hug. Adora was never a massive hugger, and yet this one felt warmer than any hug Catra had received before. 

“I was - I was so worried about you. You were gone for so long and I didn’t know what happened and I thought you’d died or gotten lost or -” Adora said, gushing in to Catra’s neck. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m alive,” She replied, brushing off the affection and the blush that came with it nonchalantly. Adora took a step back and grinned at her. 

“Just glad you’re alive. Should’ve seen this coming, though. It’s just like you to walk in after the battle’s over and ask how it went!” Adora gave a chuckle as Catra shook her head. 

“Almost done? What’re you talking about? There’s plenty of fight to be had! I’m fairly sure there’s a few people you haven’t gunned down yet.” With that, Adora’s face almost twisted in to something like sadness, but it didn’t. Not quite. 

“Yeah.” Adora gave a weak laugh as she pointed over to the edge of the village. “Actually, there's two rebels that way. We’ve still gotta catch them. Tell you what,” She said, turning to Catra with a new surge of energy, “I’ll race you to them!” And with that, Adora had jumped off the tank and was sprinting across what was left of the battlefield. 

With a chuckle under her breath that reminded her how good it felt to be next to Adora, Catra leapt on to the railings and pounced. Her feet hit the floor and in one smooth motion she was running, jumping from one obstacle to the next to keep up with Adora. They were yelling taunts and jests at one another when they had the breath to do so, neck and neck and full of adrenaline and exhilaration as they raced, just for the hell of it. 

It had been so long since they had done this outside. 

When they eventually came to the clearing, Catra didn’t notice them. Her attention was on Adora, on how to stay ahead of her, on her pumping arms and toned legs. So when Adora yelled “stop!”, she stopped and saw them for the first time. 

Bow was panting, blood trickling out of one nose as he kept his bowstring drawn, half hunched over and glaring up at the two of them. Glimmer was next to him, staying in place so that he could rest an arm on her shoulder to further steady himself and his aim. 

Adora grinned, pulling out a stun baton as she hopped down next to a tall, crooked and slender tree that bore blue fruit – the same tree, Catra realised, from earlier. She was on the same muddy wall that she’d seen earlier. Bow and Glimmer were standing not ten feet away from where they had first introduced her to the blue fruit. 

“C’mon, Catra. Shadow Weaver's going to _love_ us if we catch a princess and her favourite pet.” Adora stalked forward, ready to strike, as Bow pulled his drawstring further back and - 

“Bow.” Catra said just one word, paired with a glance that was full of warning, but it spoke volumes. 

_I’ll handle this._

And, for no good reason except for his faith, Bow relaxed his drawstring. 

Catra hopped down and took a step forward, resting a hand on Adora’s shoulder. Adora, in turn, looked over and shot her a quizzical look. 

“You know these guys?” 

“Well, duh. I didn’t just guess their names.” Adora grinned, and for a second, Catra thought she might be able to get somewhere, that this wasn’t a lost cause, but - 

“Then you know how they fight. You could finish them both off yourself, if you wanted.” Adora presented it as though it was a tempting offer, but somehow Catra didn’t bite. 

“Listen, Adora.” 

“Yeah?” 

“I know they’re rebellious scum. You know they’re rebellious scum. And if they’re stupid enough to be caught this time, they’ll be caught the next time, and the time after, and -” 

“Do you - do you want to let them go?” Adora stood back from Catra, away from the hand that was resting comfortingly on her shoulder, so that she was half facing away from Glimmer and Bow, and Catra shot them another glare that very clearly told Bow not to try his luck with a potshot. 

Bow had the better sense to stay his hand. 

“I owe them one.” 

“You owe them one?” Adora said in disbelief, her hand waving in the air. “ _You owe them one_?” 

“Yeah. I was lost in the Whispering Woods, and that guy with the heart there helped get me unlost.” 

“So what you’re saying is that he can transverse the Whispering Woods?” 

“Adora -” 

“That’s exactly what we need on our side!” Adora said, cutting in through Catra’s words. “We can’t let this one slip away!” 

“I’m not going to kill them if they saved my life, Adora! One good turn deserves another and all that shit, y’know?” 

“No, Catra, I don’t know. This is war, not a playground. They showed you weakness by helping you, so press the advantage! Did Shadow Weaver teach you nothing?” 

“Shadow Weaver taught me plenty, _Adora_ ,” Catra spat, her tone low and malicious, “but apparently she also gave you her heart of ice.” 

“Heart of – Catra, don’t give me that bull. When have you ever been about playing fair? You only ever beat anyone in drills when you play dirty – you've never entered a level playing field in your life, because you made sure of it. Now cut the sentimentality and give me my sword. Let's get this over with.” 

Catra reeled for half a second as she blinked away tears. 

“Your sword?” Catra said, her tone suspiciously low. 

“Yes, Catra, my sword.” Adora, replied, irritated. 

“The sword I got?” 

“Because _I_ asked you to.” 

“The sword I got lost for a day trying to find and battled a – a scarab for?” Catra’s voice rose to its crescendo, and - 

“You can tell me about it later! We’ve got a job to do.” Adora’s reached its crescendo simultaneously, an angry duet that, despite itself, was in sync as the two yelled at each other. Catra stepped in front of Adora, separating her from Bow and Glimmer. They could see the muscles in her back tense as she spat the next words at Adora: 

“They go free.” 

Adora scoffed in disbelief, throwing her hands up in to the air. 

“What are you, a rebel?” 

Catra said nothing. 

“Right, Catra. I’m going to give you one last chance to ditch this and we can both grab those two and go back to the Horde as heroes. We’ll be the heroes of the Siege on Thaymor. Alright?” 

Catra turned her head ever so slightly to the side until Bow and Glimmer appeared in her peripheral vision. 

“Run.” 

Adora bolted forward as Glimmer teleported away, carrying Bow with her. Catra shot out an arm, pulling Adora in to her as her momentum carried them both to the floor. She tried to twist it so that she’d land on top of Adora, but it was too much to ask and they fell side by side instead, both driving a shoulder in to the floor, with Adora lying clumsily on top of Catra’s arm.

“What the hell, Catra?” Adora shouted as she got back up on to her feet, dusting her shoulder off. She looked for any trace of the duo, any track to chase, anywhere trail she could hunt, but there was nothing.  

Such was the nature of teleportation. 

Adora walked around in circles angrily, stomping and pawing at the dirt and muttering under her breath. 

“We are going to talk about this later. Now get up and get to the troop bus – we're leaving.” 

“Not the tank with you?” Catra muttered, still lying on the floor with one arm outstretched, gazing up at the bluest sky she had ever seen. 

“ _Not_ the tank with me.” 

\--- 

“So, are you going to lie there forever?” Glimmer asked as she appeared out of thin air. 

“Maybe.” 

“It’s been two hours.” 

“I ain’t got nothing better to do.” 

“The Horde has left.” There was a pause for so long that Glimmer almost thought Catra was ignoring her, but eventually she did reply: 

“I know.” 

“You, uh, going back to join them?” 

“Nah.” 

There was another long pause as Glimmer tried to think of how to fill the silence. Catra almost looked serene as she lay down, looking up in to the sky and basking in the warmth of the day, but her face was somber. She looked as though she were mourning something, but Glimmer couldn’t tell what. 

“So, what are you going to do?” 

Another silence engulfed the air around them. 

“You could join the rebellion.” 

“I... could.” Catra noncommittally agreed. 

“I mean, what else are you going to do?” 

Catra thought about it. Right now, she wanted to lie where she was until the ground rose up and embraced her, until all the skin slipped right off of her bones and back in to the ground, sleeping and relaxing for all eternity. 

But she couldn’t do that. She had a fight to fight, and if she wasn’t fighting for the Horde, for Adora – well, who the hell was she fighting for? 

Besides, the rebellion would have food and shelter. It wouldn’t be safe, but she could always refuel and, if she didn’t like it, ditch. 

It was better than trying to survive in the woods on her own. 

“Will they kill me on sight?” 

Glimmer laughed. 

“No, no they won’t - they won’t kill you on sight! I mean, I’ll have to explain to them why you’re on our side but yeah, you’ll be safe.” 

Safe. 

Catra slowly sat up, rubbing at her eyes as she adjusted to the new view. 

“To the rebellion it is, I guess.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Catra's going to give this whole "rebel scum" thing a shot. I mean, what else is she going to do now that Adora's mad at her? Talk to her like a normal human?
> 
> Naaaaaaaaaaah.
> 
> Anyhoo, feel free to chat to me in the comments and tell me what you think. How do you find my portrayals of Bow and Glimmer? Any glaring typos? All keysmashes are appreciated.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and remember: stay hydrated!


	3. Queen Angella the Third, Regent of Brightmoon, leader of the Rebellion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so first things first: everyone say thank you to Anna! She's AKarnstein here on AO3, or you can catch her at @thankfullyimgay on Tumblr.
> 
>  
> 
> Secondly, I'm sorry for the delay, but hopefully it's worth it? This felt like a chapter I had to do to get to juicy stuff, but I found that the chapter itself was juicy so! That's a win babey!
> 
>  
> 
> Now, without any further adieu: here it is!

Catra stood with her hands deep in her pockets, staring down her nose at Queen Angella in the most disrespectful pose she could muster. That in itself was a feat, considering the fact that Queen Angella the Third, Regent of Brightmoon and leader of the Rebellion, was considerably taller than her.

“What do you call _this_ , Glimmer?”

The Queen wasn’t as angry as Catra thought she would have been. She still hadn’t broken eye contact with her, refusing to back down from their unannounced staring contest, but the question was directed at Glimmer. Her voice was cold, level and calculated. Catra wanted to say Angella was calm, but she knew better than to assume that the Queen would be foolish enough to show her true emotions right now.

“This is Catra!” Glimmer said as she teleported up to Angella, grinning from ear to ear.

“That is a Horde soldier.”

Catra had already glanced around, taking in all the possible escape routes. There were guards behind her, to the left exit and to the right exit. She wouldn’t win in a fight, but she could probably overcome them well enough to get past them. Then all she’d have to do is run -

“Your majesty”, Bow started, “this Horde soldier saved our lives.”

“Twice,” Catra added. Everyone looked at her, some disapprovingly and some with surprise, but she had managed to get their attention, for better or for worse.

“And why, Horde soldier, do you want to join the Rebellion?”

“Catra.”

“Pardon?” Angella asked as a single eyebrow raised, forming an arch with so much precision that it looked as though it had been sculpted.

“My name is Catra,” Catra spat, still trying to look down her nose at her.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t want to be a part of the Horde anymore.”

“And what,” Angella asked as the slimmest smile crept on to her lips, “makes us think that we could possibly trust you?” There was a deep silence that followed the loaded question. Diplomats, soldiers and royalty alike looked at Catra, their eyes mocking her. They all thought she was doomed, with no diplomatic response possible, as Angella had already chosen Catra’s fate. She was the Judge, the people her jury, and -

Well, Catra was the executioner.

“Nothing,” Catra answered simply.

Angella’s eyebrows spiked downwards in confusion for a half second before she regained her poise, in which time a murmur had raised in the room. Glimmer was already blubbering, making more excuses than she had time for whilst Bow simply stared at Catra in horror. People got louder, shouting accusations and calls to arms as some of the soldiers shifted with uncertainty in their armour, until -

“Silence!” One commanding shout from Queen Angella stopped even the fidgeting in the room. The sunlight from the fading day filtered in through the window behind her as she looked at Catra, who was standing in her shadow. “Why,” she began, “should I allow Horde scum such as yourself to join the rebellion?”

“Because,” Catra said, projecting her voice so it reached the far recesses of every corner of the room, “I have this.”

She unsheathed the sword and rested its tip on the ground in front of her, and the reaction was instant. The guards lurched forward, lowering their spears to her throat. Catra didn’t even flinch as she continued to stare down Angella. Angella, whose mask had finally broken, and had gasped at the sight of the sword.

“Call the guards off.”

“Guards, stay as you are,” Angella commanded, eyes narrowing as Catra attempted to command her. “Where did you get that?”

Catra scowled and stayed silent as the weight of the room pressed down upon her. She looked at Angella, who looked at her, the both of them ignoring the extreme discomfort that Bow and Glimmer were in.

“She -” Glimmer began as she stepped in, but Angella cut her off with a look and she took a step back, retreating next to Bow.

“I found it.”

Angella nodded slowly. “You found it?”

“Yes, and it’s mine now,” Catra said as she tightened her grip around it ever so slightly. She would have put it back in its sheath, but the twelve guards and the twelve spear heads that came with them made that a somewhat difficult prospect.

“The Sword of Protection belongs to the She-Ra. You will give it to us, and we will bestow it upon her when she returns. In exchange, you may join the rebellion,” Angella said after a weighty silence. She spoke sternly, as though laying out the terms to an unnegotiable contract. “What do you say?”

“No.” The guards shuffled and Angella leant forward in her chair by the slightest amount.

“No?”

“No. I’m keeping it safe for both the She-Ra and the rebellion,” Catra said as she tried to still her beating heart. She was sure that the guard closest to her could feel its vibration thrum through his ears as it did through hers, but if he could he showed no sign of it except for a single bead of sweat which rolled down his forehead and past his eye.

“Very well. You will join the rebellion and keep the Sword of Protection safe – this is your duty, for the sword is your charge,” Angella announced. She stood up from the throne and walked down towards where Catra stood, dismissing the guards with a single wave of her hands. Catra suddenly felt a lot less claustrophobic as she felt herself take a full, deep breath without the threat of impalement looming over her.

“Thanks,” she said as she tried to smile at Angella.

“Do not thank me, Catra,” Angella said with a smile far sweeter than Catra’s. “If anything happens to the sword, you will be held accountable, and punishment _will_ befall you.” Angella took Catra’s hand in her own and shook it.

“Welcome to the Rebellion, Horde Soldier Catra.”

\---

“This is your room!” Glimmer yelled. Catra would have to make sacrifices for the rebellion, and the ability to listen using her left ear was evidently one of them. Alas, they had had a good run. She made a mental note to write an obituary for it. Something along the lines of -

“It's right next to _Glimmer’s_ , which is no coincidence,” Bow said as he stepped in to the room, holding the door open as he smiled a mischievous smile and firmly avoided eye contact with Sparkles.

“Oh yeah? You lot really don’t trust me all that much, huh?” She walked inside the room as Glimmer spluttered, utterly ignoring her. It was a larger room than the entire barracks she had had back in the Horde, and far more spacious, even though there was actually stuff in this room. There was a desk made of a brilliantly white wood, a window looking out on to the woods that allowed natural light in to the room and what looked like a cork pinboard.

The centrepiece, though, was the bed. It was larger than three bunks combined. Catra wandered over to it, pressing her hand down on the mattress and she sunk down to her elbow – it was evidently more of a large pillow than a bed, and bright pink to boot.

Glimmer rushed past her and jumped in the bed to the right of her, with Bow tagging along and jumping in to the left.

“Come on!” glimmer said as she struggled to sit up in the mess of pillows.

“Join us!” Bow chimed in, face down as he surrendered himself to the luxury of being lost in the bed.

“I’ll pass,” Catra said as she scanned the room for somewhere to hide the sword at night. “The Queen said I’ve got to shower before this meal tonight. Do I have to go?” She asked, grimacing at the prospect of a meal alone with the Queen.

“Of course,” Bow said, despite being muffled by the sheets. “This is your chance to make a good impression, like I did!”

Glimmer blew a raspberry at him as she tilted her head to look at Catra. “I haven’t had dinner with mum in, like, three months. I wouldn’t wanna be in your shoes – she's gunna rip you to shreds.”

“No she won’t!” Bow protested as he tried to push himself up, which only resulted in getting buried even deeper in to the bed. “Your mum is nice!”

Glimmer let out a slight chuckle and shook her head. “Either way, she did tell me to remind you to take a shower. You, uh, don’t smell _great_ after the shenanigans at Thaymor.”

“I smell just fine, but I’ll wash. I guess that’s the price of being in the rebellion,” Catra mumbled as she stepped towards the door, sword in hand, before she stopped short.

“Where are the showers, sorry?”

\---

There was only one shower in this room.

That – it was odd, and it was private, and Catra didn’t entirely know how to react. She showered once a week, in her barrack’s time slot, with all the other cadets. There was a single button that turned the shower on, and you kept on pressing it until you were clean.

This wasn’t a shower cubicle – there was a bath and a shower head, and two different taps. Catra found the difference between hot and cold the hard way, and before long found herself sitting in the white, pristine bath with her knees to her chest and the sword by the sink, steam rising all around her as she stared at the bottles.

None of these were body, hair and conditioner gels. There were no black, unlabelled three-in-one bottles. Instead, there were pink bottles with large strawberries on them, white bottles with dragon fruit scents and green bottles that smelt of mint. One bottle was very, very small and claimed to be anti-dandruff; another had cursive writing on, preaching the wonders of coconut oil. 

Catra, for lack of a better term, was lost.

"Glimmer!” She yelled, arching her back as she projected her voice as far as it would carry. She waited for a good minute before hearing the tell-tale pattering of feet as someone huffed and puffed towards her, and in a second Glimmer had teleported through the door and come face to face with her.

“Catra, I’m -” she started, before screaming. It was loud and shrill, cutting through Catra’s ears and causing her to flinch. All of this happened before the glitter even faded from the air, Catra vaguely noted.

“You’re naked!?!”

Catra squinted in confusion. “Yes, I – is that a trick question?”

Glimmer turned on her heel, blushing as red as an apple as she crouched and put her hands over her eyes. “You’re naked,” she repeated, although she seemed to be muttering it to herself this time.

“Well, I wasn’t about to bathe with my clothes on, now, was I?” Catra said, her usual snark coming back to her as she overcame her confusion.

“What did you want?” Glimmer asked, quiet and somewhat defeated in her speech.

“Which, uh, bottle do I use?”

“Which bottle do you use?” Glimmer repeated back, almost whispering in disbelief. “Which bottle do you -” she stood up, and almost turned around but quickly covered her eyes as she began to see that Catra was sitting against the tub, resting her chin on it as her arms dangled over the rim. “You use the shampoo for hair, conditioner afterwards and body wash for the body, Catra! Which bott – this isn’t difficult!” She ranted as she became more and more indignant. “You call me from halfway across the castle as though you had been _stabbed_ to ask me how soap works? What kind of -”

“But I’ve got hair on my body. Which do I use?” Catra asked, nonchalantly cutting Glimmer off.

Glimmer stopped speaking, hands frozen in the air as her mouth hung open.

“I... don’t know.”

“Oh,” was Catra’s only reply.

“Didn’t you have soap in the Horde?”

“We had all in one. Can I use any of these bottles?”

“All in one? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Use any of the bottles.”

A silence hung in the air between them for a few seconds before Gimmer cleared her throat.

“Are you all good now?” The question was tentative, but Catra could tell she was uncomfortable and eager to go.

“Of course. You could have left at any time!” She joked, but before she managed to finish it, Glimmer had already left.

\---

Glimmer stood outside of the door to the dining room for a few seconds and wrung her hands. Had Catra really messed up that badly already? Was her cooking not up to scratch? Was mum going to say that Catra had to leave and could never come back because -

“Glimmer, I can hear you out there.” Angella’s voice cut through the air. Glimmer was fairly sure it was meant to sound warm and inviting, but it just came across as irritated. That’s all mum was these days – irritated. Irritated at her, at the rebellion, at the Horde. Irritated.

Glimmer walked in to the dining room with a fake skip in her step and plastered on a grin. Angella was at the head of the table, eight seats away from her, and she walked halfway down the table before talking.

“What’s up?”

Catra... wasn’t here. There were two dishes out, one in front of Angella and one to her left hand, with the salads Glimmer had worked so hard on. It was a pear and walnut salad, with balsamic vinegar – simple, but a favourite of hers. She liked to think that mum liked it, too.

“I was wondering if you knew where Catra was, darling,” Angella asked. She sounded tired, and like she’d really rather be doing anything else.

“I sent her down here,” Glimmer said with a frown. “Maybe she got lost?”

Angella sighed.

“Listen, mum, I’m sure she’s on her way! I -”

“Do you really think she wants to be having this meal, Glimmer?”

“It’s important that you two at least _talk_ , mum!” Glimmer said as she tapped her fingers on the back of an intricately carved high arched chair. It had been so long since she had sat in one.

“We talked plenty earlier, Glimmer. She made her attitude towards this entire business perfectly clear.” She had her fingers resting against her temples, head almost slumped over.

“Not in private, though! Come on, mum, this is important!”

“Fine,” Angella said with a sigh. “Just... find her, will you?”

“Sure thing!”

\---

Catra tore off another hunk of bread as she rearranged the pack on her back. She stepped over another root as she walked deeper in to the Whispering Woods, away from Brightmoon.

It was stupid of her to think that she could belong there. Stupid of her to think they’d accept her with open arms, stupid of her to think that if she wasn’t in the Horde, she had to be in the rebellion.

Well, screw them and their fancy shampoo. She was a free agent now.

She could do what she liked. She had the _Sword of Protection_ , and the damn She-Ra wanted it. Catra didn’t know what that meant in the slightest, but it felt powerful. It was enough to make Queen Angella allow her to be at Brightmoon. It was something, she figured, as she angrily tore another hunk of bread off of the loaf.

She had gone to the kitchens and asked for their non-perishable foodstuffs in a very discreet manner and, surprisingly, they had given them to her. She had bread, cheese and an assortment of berries and fruits in her packs, and now she was going to go and live in the forest. Alone. Like a hermit.

A very nice smelling hermit.

The Whispering Woods were the perfect place to hide, really. They constantly changed, so no one could find her, in theory. At least she could tell when it was coming to night time, which was a silver lining, really. She had come to a clearing, and she could see the faint sunset in the sky. It looked like a painting, where an artist had used broad strokes of watercolours to meld the warmth of the sky on to the cold, blue canvass of the night sky. Catra appreciated its beauty as she slumped down next to a tree, shrugging her pack off and laying her sword next to her. She almost dozed off as she let her thoughts fly free, but -

There was a snapping of a twig some distance off.

She was up in a flash, and she tracked the rustling in the undergrowth as it got nearer to her. She picked up the sword, holding it in both hands as she steadied herself, tensing for whatever comes. Whatever it was, she just hoped it wasn’t Glimmer or Bow; she could deal with a lot of things right now, ravenous monsters included, but she couldn’t deal with a guilt trip. She couldn’t deal with being dragged back to the rebellion, or - 

Well, on the bright side, neither Bow nor Glimmer entered the clearing.

On the less than bright side, Adora was now only ten meters away from her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3
> 
> Catra doesn't belong at Brightmoon. She doesn't belong at the Horde. Where does she belong? What will happen between her and Catra?
> 
> Tune in next time to find out!
> 
> Please, please, please comment! It means the world to me and gave me the motivation to write a third chapter of this. I do appreciate anything, from a keysmash to a "nice" to constructive criticism or straight up gushing. Thank you!!!
> 
> I'll see you all next time with another chapter when I find the time between all this study I have. Until then, stay hydrated!


	4. The First Confrontation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back at it again lads! Now, a word of forewarning:
> 
> This may not go how some of you expected. Hopefully that's a good thing - if I can keep you on your toes and make it enjoyable for you, then I feel like I will have succeeded as a writer, in part.
> 
> Secondly, please thank my beta, Akarnstein! You can grab her at @thankfullyimgay on Tumblr, or if you yell "Thanks Anna!" Very loudly in to the void, she'll feel it from halfway across the world. Either method works fine.
> 
> Now, without any further adieu, I proudly present: The First Confrontation!

Adora was now less than ten meters away from Catra.

"Oh," Catra thought to herself, which was then proceeded by another word I can't put in a T-rated book. The universe had a funny way of giving her everything she asked for, but in a uniquely awful way, and she was very much tired of it.

Adora looked at her with a faint sense of confusion which was overridden by an overwhelming tiredness. She too seemed done with everything, but Catra wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of an easy ride here.

She needed to be casual.

She should say something. Her mind screamed at her to talk, but her mouth just opened and refused to say anything. She needed something with an affected casualness. Something that said "oh, it's you", as opposed to "Oh! It's you!"

Maybe: hey there, how's it hanging?

No, god, she wasn't that old. Maybe she could keep the hey. Maybe she should just straighten her spine, put her shoulders back and say a simple "Hey, Adora." That could work. That, actually, would work quite nicely, so Catra straightened her spine, out her shoulders back and -

"Why are you pointing a sword at me?"

Ah, darn.

“Why do you have the nerve to show your face here?” Catra retorted as she began to circle Adora slowly. She mentally patted herself on the back for managing to think up a quip so quickly under such stressful circumstances – she really was getting better at this.

“It’s... the Whispering Woods. I’m  _ allowed _ to be here, I’m a Force Captain. Are you?” Adora asked. She had picked up on Catra’s poise, and had begun to echo her, like two boxers in a ring that were still sizing up the other. These, Catra reasoned, were the light jabs and dodges that let one warrior size another up. This was the prelude to a real battle between – well, she was going to say rivals, but -

Were they rivals?

“I don’t have to answer to Force Captains,” Catra said with a devilish smile. “I’m not a part of the Horde anymore.”

“What are you then, soldier?” And with a single word, Adora crumpled Catra’s defences as though they were no stronger than a sheet of tin foil, piercing past her façade and wounding her.

Soldier.

“My  _ name _ is Catra,” she spat. Adora seemed nonplussed, and absolutely emotionless. Her eyes – Catra had to blink, but Adora’s eyes were puffy, as though she had been crying before she came in to the clearing, even though it had all been wiped away by now. Now, there was only cold determination behind her eyes.

“If you’re not with the Horde, you’re with the rebellion.”

Adora, Catra noticed with more than a pinpricking of tears rising to her eyes, didn’t offer to take her back. Adora had done a lot of things that hurt, but that, that hurt a whole lot more than the rest of them combined. She spoke as though she didn’t care about Catra as a person, and instead was just trying to figure out if she was yet another thing she’d have to deal with today.

She was always just another thing people had to deal with.

“Well, I’m  _ not _ with the Horde.”

Catra continued to pace around Adora, walking quicker now as she began kicking at the floor. Adora increased her pace to match her, but her eyes were flitting between her and the sword now.

“I’m going to give you one chance to surrender,” Adora said in a rather matter-of-fact way.

“Oh, how sanctimonious.”

Catra twisted the sword in her grip and plunged the blade in to the ground, driving it deep enough to be able to stay upright without her support.

“Come on then,” Catra said as she raised her hands to guard her face, her hands clenched in to fists.

Adora sighed slightly before obliging. She raised her hands and clenched her fists and, after a second to tense and judge the space between them, darted forward.

_ \--- _

_ Adora came at her and threw a right hook. It hit Catra square in the face, leaving a mark that would turn in to one of the blackest eyes she’d ever had. _

_ Catra squealed, and Adora instantly stopped, holding the side of her face. _

_ “I’m so sorry! I just -” She began, but she was cut off by a sound that signalled the end of the spar. _

_ She had won. _

_ \--- _

Adora came at her and, as always, started off with a right hook. It was fast and it would hurt like hell. Catra had asked why Adora never jabbed like the others, to which she had said that she didn’t want to show her hand too early. Jabs were for testing, she had reasoned, and if you already had the measure of your opponent it was simply better to catch them off guard with the hook.

Catra raised her right hand and caught the fist, sliding her palm so that she could grapple Adora’s forearm. She rolled with the punch and, when she got to Adora’s side, grabbed Adora’s right shoulder with her own left hand. She pushed and pulled simultaneously, trying to throw her to the ground. It was a simple throw, but an effective one.

\---

_ Adora started off with a right hook – nothing new there. Catra grabbed her fist and, pushing and pulling simultaneously, attempted to use her momentum against her to throw her. It had worked before, so it should - _

_ But Adora was expecting it. She let herself get lifted off of her right foot but planted her left in the ground and, using their very close proximity, raised her right foot and planted it in to Catra’s stomach. Winded, Catra doubled over, coughing as she tried to blink back tears. _

_ Adora regained her balance and was rushing towards her. Catra tried to straighten her back and raise her hands away from her stomach. _

_ Catra couldn’t straighten her back or raise her hands away from her stomach. _

_ Adora slammed her knee in to Catra’s defenceless face. She only did it once, so that she would definitively win the spar – it was necessary, and far from rubbing salt in any existing wounds.  _

_ She had won. _

\---

Catra hopped back, in anticipation of the kick.

She knew how this went – she had sparred Adora hundreds of times, and each time they built on this dance, adding a step here or there. Catra knew all of Adora’s moves, and Adora knew all of Catra’s counters, and Adora knew all of Catra’s counter-counters, and so on and so forth. It was intricate, detailed, and unexplainable. The only way to get to the level of experience the two of them were at was to have sparred against each other every other day for ten years.

Catra, therefore, was gobsmacked when Adora went flying face-first in to the ground.

She stepped back a step, grounding herself momentarily as she gained her bearings. Adora hadn’t countered Catra in the slightest, which was strange, but -

Adora was back up and running straight back towards her.

If Adora had started with a right hook, she would follow up with a kick to the face. It wouldn’t be spinning, because that would give the opponent too much time to react – Adora preferred snap-kicks, and snap-kick she did.

She kicked right at Catra’s face, who lazily took a step back and ducked under it. She was shorter, and it made what was coming up far easier as she grabbed the leg, keeping it suspended in the air. With a simple kick to the back of the knee, and another in the small of the back to follow, Adora had crumpled on the floor.

The same Adora who had the audacity to look shocked.

She was on her knees on the floor, and rolled away from Catra, trying desperately to get out of combat range. She sprang back up to her feet and swayed slightly, having the wind knocked out of her from being thrown in to the ground repeatedly.

Catra, however, just stood there and looked on in confusion.

Adora channelled her own confusion and frustration in to anger and charged at her. She threw a left jab, which meant that -

\---

_ Adora threw a left jab. _

_ Surely, Catra reasoned, that meant that a right punch is coming, and Catra raised her guard appropriately. Instead, Adora yanked her left hand back and swung a low hook, sinking her fist in to her side in an outstandingly powerful liver shot. _

_ Catra crumpled and staggered back, lowering her guard to protect her sensitive sides and - _

_ Adora threw another left hook, catching her in her now-vulnerable face. She finished the job off with a right punch that arced upwards, catching Catra right on the chin as she fell over. _

_ She had won. _

\---

Catra kept stepping back, avoiding every single shot Adora fired her way.

Adora tried to retaliate, but Catra found she couldn’t block, counter, or even mitigate any of Catra’s personalised blows. This was a walk in the park, and Catra was all the more confused for it. Why, she wondered to herself desperately, was Adora not putting her all in to this? Did she really think that this was a joke, that she could beat Catra as though she were some common rebel?

Did she really not care?

Dodging a particularly high blow, Catra rose up and grabbed at Adora’s throat. She lifted her off the ground and, in a surge of temporary strength, squeezed her windpipe tight and threw her as far as she could muster.

It wasn’t particularly far, but Adora landed on her back and bounced more than once, rolling in midair. That rough landing must have hurt.

“Try!” Catra screamed, her anger ripping out of her body as her hands vibrated with frustration. “Won’t you just  _ try _ and fight me? I,” she continued, kicking Adora straight in the face as she began to sit up, so hard that the back of her head thumped against the ground, “don’t need your pity!”

Catra had sat on Adora’s chest, knees each side of her shoulders, and punctuated each of the four words with a punch to her face. The knuckles on her right hand  _ hurt _ , but it didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as seeing Adora when she was bloodied, battered and bruised.

In a sick twist of luck, the tears welling up in her eyes obscured her view of Adora very much. It did nothing to block the hiccuping breaths that Adora was making as she struggled to pull breath in to her lungs, or the sounds she made when she coughed up the half-ragged breaths when they had finally delivered her a meagre supply of oxygen, but it was a small blessing.

Adora had stopped struggling, instead choosing to put all of her effort in to breathing. Her eyes were blurry and unfocused, but she could feel the tears begin to splash down on to her face with alarming frequency.

“Why,” Adora whispered, talking slowly and between breaths, “are you crying?”

Catra clenched her teeth as she leant over again, a new wave of pain hitting her.

“Because you made me  _ fight _ you, Adora!” She unclenched her eyes, which were hurting from being scrunched up for so long, just in time to see a look of confusion flit across Adora’s face in the form of a frown.

“You... know my name.”

It was almost a question but, before she could ask her to elaborate, Adora’s eyes had closed and she had passed out. Catra slumped over and let herself slide down next to Adora, letting the earth embrace her. She shouldn’t have felt exhausted, or even achey in the slightest, but she did.

She felt done with it all, but there was one question that buzzed about in the back of her mind. It buzzed around like a fly around fresh roadkill, threatening to swarm and dominate the whole of the inside of her skull if she didn’t address the issue now, so reluctantly she relented and asked the inevitable question:

What on earth was wrong with Adora?

Adora acted as though she barely even knew her. Was that spite? Was Adora really capable of being that cruel? Or was Shadow Weaver up to her old tricks again and using dark magics? Or, more rather, new tricks – Catra had never seen Shadow Weaver do anything that drastic before, and she barely even knew if it was possible.

She still wouldn’t put it past her, though.

She lay there for an hour, trying to figure out what had happened to Adora, and trying to figure out her next step. This much was clear to her, though:

She wasn’t going to be able to do it alone.

Catra slowly let her head fall to the side as she stared in the general direction of Brightmoon. Well, knowing the Whispering Woods, she was probably staring in the entire wrong direction, but still. It looked like she would be joining the rebellion after all. She just needed to find her way back, and for that she'd need a small miracle.

Right on cue, Bow stumbled in to the clearing.

“Catra!” He began to yell in relief, but as soon as he saw the two of them lying side by side he promptly squealed, covered his eyes and jumped half a foot in the air.

“Damn it!” He began. “I'm sorry! I shouldn't have intruded! I should've known you'd left a lover behind in the Horde and was meeting up for a romantic midnight rendez-vous, I'll just leave now, I'm so sor-”

“Bow, if this is what you think romance looks like, we're going to need to sit down and have a chat.”

He slowly reopened his eyes and fully took the scene in. Catra was lying next to Adora in the middle of the clearing, and Adora was bloody and knocked out.

“I mean, I'm sure  _ someone _ out there -”

“Don't finish that thought.”

They both stayed silent for a couple of seconds too long.

“So,” Bow said, “what are you doing out here?”

“Proving my worth to the rebellion by capturing a Force Captain,” Catra lied. She stood up and walked to the side of the clearing, pulling her sword out of the ground in one strong pull.

Bow tentatively walked closer to the knocked out Force Captain before suppressing a squeak when he recognised her.

“Isn't that the one that tried to capture us?” He asked.

“Yup.”

“The one who almost made you cry when she said you -”

“You know what?” Catra said, cutting in and turning around on her heel to face Bow, “I don’t think we need a play by play of who said what.”

“So, what now?”

“Well, we're going to take Adora back to Brightmoon as a prisoner and ask a few a questions. I can tell you what happened on the way.”

Bow simply nodded grimly as Catra picked Adora up, bridal style. There was a strange softness in her grip, but Bow knew better than to comment on it right now. He simply let Catra blink her tears back in silence, so she didn’t have to answer to anyone but herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3
> 
> Symbolism? Me? I would never!
> 
> Now, I was rather proud of that fight scene, but please comment to tell me what you thought of the chapter. Feel free to tell me the good, the bad and the ugly. If something worked for you, or you just didn't click with one part, or I made a silly typo, please tell me! Even a "nice" would be much appreciated.
> 
> So, I'm leaving you with that to think on. What happened? Why did it happen? What happens next? Find out next time on The Butterfly Effect!
> 
> Until then, stay hydrated!


	5. Scales and arpeggios

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! Another one, just in time for the weekend. First off, you've got Anna to thank again (@thankfullyimgay on tumblr) - this chapter was going to be longer, but it was far too long and the scene needed work. She picked up a bunch of typos and places where I was inconsistent with tense, so this couldn't have been done without her!
> 
> Now, I hope you're all ready for sweet, sweet Bow and catradora angst. Have fun!

“Get a doctor.”

A guard rushed off to get a doctor at Queen Angella’s behest while she rushed forward to the now tired Catra. She crouched over Adora slightly, peering at her unconscious face and taking in both her uniform and her bruises.

Catra was standing at the entrance to Brightmoon’s throne room, the rising sun painting the skyline behind her. She still had Adora held bridal style, and her face was slumped heavily against her chest, and a not-inconsiderate amount of drool was now running down her vest.  

“What happened here?” She sounded concerned, which was strange – Catra had expected anger, or failing that, at least a tinge of pride. What was more worrying, though, was that Catra couldn’t quite tell who she was concerned for.

“Your majesty,” Bow said, “I found Catra in a clearing in the Whispering Woods. She -” and he hesitated, glancing quickly at Catra, who noticed out of the corner of her eye but focused on staring dead ahead.

“She had defeated this enemy in one-on-one combat.”

“And what, pray tell, were you doing meeting another Horde soldier, Catra? Did you think it being in the middle of the night or in secret would make it any better?” Angella had now assessed Adora, and straightened her back as she talked to look at Catra. Catra felt too exhausted to feel like she was being grilled thoroughly. She just sighed, ignoring the heat of the limelight as she shook her head.

“I was proving my worth to both you and the rebellion.” Even to Catra, it felt like a robotic stock answer.

“We’ll speak about this over dinner,” Angella said as a doctor rushed in to the room. He took her off Catra, who should have been glad to be rid of the dead weight, except she had become used to its presence. He was now crouched over her body, fingers probing as he made sure she was stabilised. Catra knew that he was only doing his job, but that still didn’t help to prevent the slight hatred that began to build up towards him.

“In the meantime,” Angella continued, “I ask that you remain in your room. You will be called down when you are needed.” Angella finished her speech and, without giving Catra any time for a retort, turned to the guards and started to issue orders regarding cells and prisoners of war.

Bow rested a hand on Catra’s shoulder, and instead of tense up, she felt herself wanting to melt in to a puddle and allow the aches of her bones to slip away.

“Catra,” he said, softly.

“Yeah?”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

It was an enticing offer. Bow seemed to be good with the whole ‘emotions’ thing, and she hadn’t had anyone to talk to since she’d left the Horde. She could feel her emotions bottling up and raging against the inside of her skin, screaming to get out as they boiled and bubbled.

“Nah.”

Or maybe she needed a lie down.

\---

Angella’s version of ‘grounding’ was far more lenient than Catra was used to.

She was simply confined to her room. There was no exercise, no drills, no strategies to memorise in the meantime. The lack of menial tasks to fill her punishment was a welcome change of pace from the Horde.

That, and she could move her limbs.

Whenever she or Adora had been bad, Shadow Weaver paralyzed Catra. Sometimes she would make her float, but other times she would simply paralyze her where she was. If she was simply standing, it was bearable, and Catra only had to fight the unattainable urge to twitch, or itch, or to move as her skin began to crawl.

Floating was similar. She’d feel the ache on her upper arms, as though she were holding herself up by them, but Catra had done plenty of pull ups and push ups in her life – it was a burn she was used to.

Being caught running was the worst. Shadow Weaver wouldn’t supplement her with energy – she technically wasn’t freezing Catra. She was preventing her from moving. The difference was important, Catra found out, because after her muscles burnt through her reserve of energy, they began to burn as they desperately tried to keep herself still in the most awkward positions.  

To Catra, who was fully engulfed in the luxury of the softest bed she had ever laid on, it seemed worlds away.

Some small part of her told her that she should be worried about how easily she was letting go of what happened. It screamed that she should be tense and on guard for when Angella inevitably turned around and drew the pain that she was due out of Catra, drop by drop, until Catra couldn’t even remember what she’d done to warrant it.

Yet here she was, deliciously adrift in the world between the asleep and the living.

Catra hadn’t slept in too long. Her muscles had given up, and she was curled up on her bed as the pillows rose around her. She had closed her eyes to block out the bright pink and garish colours, but some part of her didn’t allow her to sleep. Her eyes kept opening back up, cracking open the slightest amount to survey the room in a half-asleep state before dozing off for undefined periods of time that always felt like a little too long. Her muscles and her mind were relaxing, falling slowly in to a deep slumber, but the back of her mind was on another plane of existence entirely. It was blaring a siren in to her brain at all times, constantly.

She was worryingly alone.

She always slept with Adora next to her. Catra's roughest nights were when Adora was away on a drill weekend without her, or had to be somewhere else for some other convoluted reason that Catra simply didn’t care about. It didn’t happen often, of course, but when it did, Catra remembered it.

Like now.

Her eyes cracked open once more as she scanned the room quickly for anything that wasn’t meant to be there. Yet again finding nothing, she resigned herself to trying to sleep again. The moment she closed her eyes, though, she heard a tap.

She shot up out of bed instantly, floundering about as she tried to navigate the turbulent waters of the incredibly soft bed. She rolled off the bed and on to the floor, landing on two legs and a hand as she grasped for her sword with the free hand. It took a few attempts but she found it, and instantly stood up, straightening her back as she began swinging the sword around and pointing it at things. She couldn’t identify the source of the sound, and her eyes were too bleary to properly be able to pinpoint anything through sight. She strained her ears again, and -

There was another tap.

The window.

She slowly approached it, sword first, before another tap came through. By this point, she had blinked away enough sleep to see that it was a pebble that was being thrown against the window – relieved, she lowered her sword and walked closer.

Bow was outside, and he had his arm slung back, about to throw another pebble. He froze suddenly, and changed his grip on the pebble to wave at her as he conspicuously dropped an entire armful of pebbles on to the ground in front of him.

Catra opened the window as she leant on the sill somewhat.

“What are you doing here?”

“No need to sound so grateful!” Bow called up as he took off his golden bow, nocking an arrow and pointing at – he was pointing it directly at her. What was he doing? He could -

“Duck!”

Catra dropped to the deck in record time, her hands slamming in to the wooden floor as she desperately tried to soften the blow on her face. It didn’t work entirely, but it worked _enough_. A few seconds later, an arrow flew through the window and sunk in to the wall behind her. It had a rope tied to the behind, which Bow began to climb up.

Bow, it seemed, was entering her room.

She got up and brushed herself off, blinking the last of the sleep out of her eyes as Bow clambered in to her room and over the windowsill.

“You’re not going to offer me a hand?” He grunted with a half-smile as he hauled himself in to the room.

“You’re not going to ask if you can come in?” Catra said as she flopped back on to the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Nope,” he said, only slightly out of breath. “You seemed like you probably needed someone to talk to.” He was hunched over, panting thinly as he rested his hands on his legs.  

“What about?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

There was a moment of silence that hung in the air before he walked over to the bed and fell on to it beside her. She tensed for a half second, but having someone else’s presence was... comforting, in a way.

It was almost like Adora.

Except Adora was strong. She would lie out, taking up the space in the bed like a hot water bottle while Catra would curl up somewhere and sleep, letting the reassuring vibrations of her breathing run through her. Bow was lankier, and less, well, big and warm. That being said, Bow still had muscles, but it was difficult for anyone to be as strong as Adora was.  

“I just didn’t expect to see _her_.” Catra hated how soft her voice sounded. She almost called it broken, but it wasn’t anywhere near broken. She simply wouldn’t accept anything of the sort, so it simply wasn’t true.  

“What’s her name?” Bow asked. He was barely speaking above a whisper, but he didn’t need to – he was only a foot away.

“Adora.”

Tears weren’t welling up in her eyes as she said the name. Bow couldn’t see that, because she chose to believe that he too was staring at the ceiling as they talked. That meant that, for all intents and purposes, they didn’t exist. He wouldn’t have noticed how she had to struggle to keep them where they were, or how they were so close to breaking loose and flowing down each cheek in a waterfall of tears for the simple reason that they didn’t exist.

Bow would have heard Catra's voice crack halfway through the word, but that had nothing to do with the name at all. It was an entirely unrelated phenomenon – luck, or perhaps fate, caused her voice to crack at that point in time.

“Is she an ex?” Bow asked, his voice soft.

“No,” Catra replied. She had to keep her voice equally quiet, because she didn’t trust it to crack if she spoke above a whisper. It would run away from her, carrying her emotions in its arms before falling over and spilling them everywhere, and that would be no good at all.

“We never dated. We could have,” she admitted, her voice hitching when she admitted that they could have been great.

“But we never did.”

Admitting that, however, brought a heavy weight down on to her chest that may as well have crushed her soul, because now she was fairly certain that they never could. That was an opportunity that she had given up.

“Why not?”

“I... guess we were both afraid. Afraid of taking the first step. Afraid of each other’s reactions. Afraid of how things might change. But,” she said, her voice beginning to speed up slightly as more and more hitches crept in to her voice, “we never thought about how things could change for the better, and now I’ve thrown that away. She doesn’t remember who I _am_ , Bow!”

And with that, the tears began flowing out of her eyes, and Bow must have definitely noticed what was happening.  
“I’m sure she’ll remember,” Bow said, but his voice sounded uncertain and shaky. Was - was he crying too? Catra couldn't quite bring herself to care.

“I'm sure she'll remember,” Bow repeated, almost as though he were trying to convince himself as much as her.

“I’m sure she’ll remember.”

\---

Catra jolted upwards to a banging at the door.

Her eyes were blurry, and blinking and rubbing them wasn’t helping enough. The banging continued, fast and heavy, and it felt like a jackhammer that was pounding in to Catra’s head.

“What?” Catra’s voice sounded hoarse. She hated sounding weak.

“The Queen requests your presence in the dining room,” a voice answered, before she heard the metal clanging of armour as they stepped away from the door.

“You’d best be off. You don’t wanna keep the Queen waiting,” Bow murmured beside her, eyes still closed as he lay face up in the bed. He was still a good five feet away from her, but she had rather embarrassingly forgotten about him.

It came flooding back to her.

She had _cried_ in front of Bow.

“If you tell anyone about what happened here today,” Catra said as she struggled to stand up and get out of the ever-shifting landscape of the bed, “I’ll murder you.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Catra half-walked, half-tumbled in to the en-suite. The artificial lighting wasn't as nice as the oranges and pinks of the natural sunset that swept through the window and engulfed her room, but it would have to do. She grabbed either side of the sink, leaning down on to it as she blinked out the last of the sleep from her eyes. The en-suite was spacious, to say the least. There was a luxurious sink whose basin Catra could probably sit in, and a large, circular mirror hung on the wall had protruding edges, making it look as though it was actually built in to the wall at times.

Catra looked at herself in the mirror.

Her eyes were red and puffy. The down that grew on her face where her tears had run down was now matted and stuck up, and she could see the beginnings of little crystalline specks of salt peppering the trail. Her hair was astray and a mess, but she would have nowhere near enough time to wash it – combing would have to suffice.

She did have a brush here, right?

After a short search, she confirmed that there was a brush. It was pink and frilly, just like everything else in the palace was. She tugged it through her hair, wincing as she pulled it forcefully through the matted clumps that had formed in her sleep.

She’d need to do something about her voice.

“Do, re, mi -” she began, but her voice cracked and the “fa” that followed was lost to the hoarseness of her voice. She cleared her throat and tried again.

“Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do!”

It sounded too weak. She yanked the hairbrush out of her hair, resting it on the side as she turned on the tap. Catra cupped her hands underneath the stream, and slowly drunk from the constantly brimming bowl she had made. Hopefully, the water would refresh her voice.

She tried the scale again, and again it failed.

Catra wasn’t a musical person. Not really. Cadets weren't allowed music in the Fright Zone. Every now and again, someone would start up a shanty or a marching chant, but if they were anywhere near officers it would quickly be shut down, so it only ever happened in dorms or tucked away places that the cameras couldn’t reach.

Or, more rather, where they thought the cameras couldn’t reach. Catra wasn’t so naïve as to believe that every inch of the Fright Zone wasn’t monitored 24/7. Did it matter which one was true if the Horde turned a blind eye to it either way?

Anyhow, she had found the book one day. She hadn’t even been looking for trouble, but it went out of its way to find her. It was folded in half, wedged behind a toilet between the pipes and the wall. Curiosity had prompted her to take it out and read it, but wonder had made her keep it.

The front cover was soft, almost as though it were more of a pamphlet than a book, closer to a magazine than literature. The front page was a pale yellow, with green writing declaring that it was part of “Schirmer’s library of musical classics,” whoever Schirmer was. The book itself was called “Solfège de Solfèges.” Catra didn’t know what it had meant at the time, and in all reality didn’t know what it meant now, even after having memorised each page of the book, but it was the first language that Catra had ever read that clearly wasn’t English.

Being bent in half had taken its toll on the book in the form of a near-permanent crease that ran across the centre of the book. The pages were crumpled and yellowed, so Catra was always delicate when she slowly turned the pages. It was, in short, a book on musical notation. The concept of recording music was unheard of to Catra. Music was a somewhat taboo tradition that was reserved for Force Captains who were expected to attend diplomatic meetings or balls, and even then it was was passed on orally or through classes, from person to person; printing it would allow people to mass produce it and let anyone read it.

The only thing that was printed in the Fright Zone was propaganda, gun manuals and maps.

So, she took it and studied it. The quick walk back to her barracks with the book stuffed up her shirt was a perilous one, and it was the most frightening thing she had ever done in the Fright Zone. She knew that if Shadow Weaver caught her, then -

Well, she didn’t want to think about what Shadow Weaver would put her through.

The book lived under Adora’s mattress – Catra had the top bunk, so anyone would have been able to see it if she put it under hers. She studied it at night, and practiced in hushed tones when she thought she was alone as she could be.

Sometimes, she studied it with Adora. They could both read, of course, but Catra more often than not found herself reading _to_ Adora, teaching her what the notes meant and how to hit each one properly. She taught her the difference between sharps and flats, between major and minor and between scales and arpeggios.

It was useless information that made her feel warm.

Adora could have learnt it herself, of course. They both knew that. Catra was self-taught, and therefore Adora could teach it to herself better, but they both let Catra teach her. They both liked it.

Or, at the very least, Catra enjoyed it.

And now she was welling up again.

Catra bent over again and splashed cold water on her face, around her eyes, in an attempt to push the traitorous tears back in to the tear ducts they came from. She scrubbed at the down on her face with a towel vigorously before trying to smooth it over, but she already knew it was a futile effort. It would stick up like it always did after a wash and a scrub like that.

It would have to do.

 She sung one more scale to see where her voice was at. It wasn’t anywhere near as weak as the previous attempts, and it definitely could have been stronger, but it would have to do – she had a Queen to meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Adora is locked up and catra and Angella need to have a chat. What's going to happen? You'll fins out next time on The Butterfly Effect!
> 
> Until then, please comment whatever pops in to your mind. It really gives me the motivation to keep on writing. Tell me what you think was good, not so good, or just keysmash! I'd love to hear what you think about musical catra, and I'm more than willing to answer questions.
> 
> Until next time, remember to stay hydrated!


	6. Walnuts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whenever we're being as thick as two short planks, my biology teacher calls us walnuts. I'm not sure if this is very specific to him, or whether it's a universally playful insult, but that's what it always reminds me of. Take that how you will!
> 
> As per usual, this chapter couldn't have been done without @thankfullyimgay. The ending was going to be different, but it felt wrong and misplaced - heavily wrong. Together, we managed to improve it a lot! I couldn't have done this one without her.
> 
> This chapter focuses on Angella, Catra, and Catra's relationship with Adora. There's the past, the present and how our more recent developments have changed that relationship - if at all :P. Gosh, I really can't ramble in these A/Ns without spoiling the darn chapter, huh? I'll leave you to read the chapter... for now.

The Queen was sitting on the other end of the table to Catra. 

They were in a large room with a solid, wooden table surrounded by equally sturdy high-backed chairs. They were the kind of chair that was built to look impressive, not feel impressive, and Catra could feel it every time she fidgeted. A single beam of light cut the room in half as Catra pushed the walnut around her plate with the fork. 

She’d had walnuts before. They were a fundamental part of the mixed nuts packs that some of the ration packs had back home - 

She’d had walnuts before. They were a fundamental part of the mixed nuts packs that some of the ration packs had back in the Horde, but she’d never seen them like this, with a salad with pears and lettuce leaves and some sort of black dressing she had never had before. 

Salad leaves were so low in calories. It almost seemed pointless to eat them. 

“Bow and Glimmer filled me in on the situation.” Angella’s voice cut across the silence, before it slowly resettled and rested on Catra’s shoulders like a burden she, specifically, was made to carry. For a half second she gripped her knife a little tighter before realising that Bow  _ couldn’t _ have told the Queen about her crying. Even if he could have, she was fairly sure that he wouldn’t have. Or was she hopeful? 

“And?” Catra said. 

There was another moment of silence as Angella finished chewing on her food, staring at Catra all the while. Catra didn’t make eye contact, instead looking at the food on her plate. 

“Tell me about her.” 

Catra’s eyes widened, and she looked up and met Angella’s gaze. It wasn’t anywhere near as cold as she had expected. There was something else in there, something far softer than what Catra had thought she’d see. 

“Who, Adora?” 

“Yes.” 

“I - I don’t know where to begin -” Catra started, stumbling over her words. She had expected to be scolded, to be shouted at, to be hit, but this – this wasn’t what she was expecting. She could deal with anger, but how did she deal with pity? 

“Then start with your relationship. What was she to you?” 

Catra’s blood ran cold. What  _ was  _ Adora to her? 

It was hard to come up with a straight answer. She was emotionally drained from her earlier session of crying, so her initial thought ( _ cruel _ ) was quickly discarded. 

What was Adora to her? 

_ Selfish _ , the voices inside her whispered, but Catra knew logically that it wasn’t Adora’s fault she was the golden girl. It wasn’t her fault that Shadow Weaver loved Adora and took out all of her anger on Catra. She knew that Adora didn’t really want to be promoted to Force Captain while leaving Catra behind in the dust. 

She just wished she could tell that to her heart. 

“Well?” Angella asked as she speared an uneven chunk of pear with her fork. 

“She was a friend,” Catra began. That much was true, at least. “We grew up together and did everything together. I always had her back, and she always had mine. She was the golden girl of the Horde. Everyone loved her.” 

“And you?” 

“I was the black sheep. I was... less loved.” 

“But this Adora – did she love you?” 

The question hung in the air as Catra opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. 

_ Adora could never love her. _

The voices swarmed in her mind again, egging her on and trying to drag her back down in to anger, but she swallowed and resisted the temptation. Barely. 

“I guess we’ll never know,” Catra said. She forcefully cut through a pear so hard that her knife clanged against the plate. The sound resonated throughout the room, and they both let it settle before continuing to talk. 

“Did you love Adora?” 

The question hit her like a sack of bricks. She felt winded, as though she had just taken three arrows to the chest during an intense fistfight as opposed to being asked a relatively innocent question during a meal. 

_ Did  _ she love Adora? 

It wasn’t a question she felt particularly excited about tackling. Especially not here, especially not now. She could have loved Adora. She certainly loved the little snort that came before her laughs, which was a mark that she genuinely found whatever it is she was laughing at funny. She loved sleeping next to her, because it felt right – Catra was the exact right size to curl up on Adora’s feet, and Adora always slept on her back and rarely tossed and turned in the night. She loved how straight-laced Adora was, which made teasing her so easy and pushing her to bend the rules so satisfying. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Catra said as she continued to avoid eye contact. “I don’t have a relationship with the prisoner you have. I  _ can’t _ have a relationship with the prisoner you have locked up. A relationship is two sided, and she doesn’t remember me.” 

_ Was their relationship ever two sided when she did remember her? _

Catra shook the voices out of her head again – she didn’t want the bitter lens of memory to cloud her judgement of what she had. She was lucky to have had it, and she didn’t want to lose it. Not like this. 

“A relationship is two sided,” Angella said, agreeing with Adora. “Love, however, is not.” 

Catra put her knife and fork down. 

“We were never together, if that’s what you’re asking. We’re not ex-girlfriends, or ex-lovers. We... could have been, but we’re not. We’re missed opportunities,” Catra admitted. It hurt to admit it, but at the same time it felt like a small burden had been lifted. It was like stretching a tired leg – it felt satisfying to go through the pain of pumping life back in to the forgotten limb. 

Angella nodded. 

“Well, we’ve talked to Adora and she’s uncooperative. She’s given us her name, her rank and her serial number, and nothing more. We wanted you to talk to her, if you were comfortable with it.” 

Catra was instantly suspicious. She was flipped back in to battle mode, with her senses on high alert and her muscles tensed. 

“How do you know I won’t betray you?” She asked, cutting straight to the elephant in the room. 

“Because you won’t be alone. Bow and Glimmer will be there alongside you,” Angella replied. Her tone was unwavering and indecipherable, which Catra both respected and found frustrating. 

“I want to be alone with her,” Catra said, and she forced herself to look up in to the Queen’s eyes. They were nowhere near as cruel as their first meeting, but there was not an inch of negotiation in those marble eyes. 

Catra had taken one verbal step forward and then three back, hyper-aware of the hypocrisy in what she was saying but willing to fight for it nonetheless. She was raised an inch off of the seat of her chair, her arms trembling with the sheer amount of force she was pushing in to the table with through her palms as her knuckles started to bend and crack. 

“No. If you want to speak to Adora, you will do so with Glimmer and Bow.” She spoke as though the matter was settled, which simply wouldn’t work for Catra. 

“But I want some privacy with her! Maybe I can jog her memory, or I can -” 

“Whatever it is you plan to do, you can do it with Bow and Glimmer present. You cannot escape the fact that you yourself were a Horde soldier – this precaution is to protect you as much as it is to protect me. If anything were to happen, you would be considered an unreliable witness.” 

“No. No, I’m going to talk with Adora, and I’m going to do it -” Catra began, but she was cut off by a stern look from Angella. It was strange, because it was just that, a look, yet Catra found it was hard to keep on complaining. She shut her mouth and ground her teeth as she sunk back in to the chair, digging her heels in to the ground as she pushed herself back in to the depths of the seat. Her back almost seemed to be folded in half as she hunched over her food, glaring at it as she continued to grind her teeth. 

“Am I understood?” 

Catra looked up to Queen Angella with the type of glare that made her opinion on the matter extremely clear. 

“Yes, Shadow Weaver.” 

Catra immediately twisted her fork in her hand as her grip tightened and her blood went cold. She had been so focused on what she had wanted to say, on what she had wanted to argue, that she had almost forgotten who she was arguing with. Of course, Shadow Weaver would have punished her greatly by now, but she was the only mother figure she had ever had. She stared down at her salad as her eyes widened in a peculiar mixture of fear and embarrassment. 

Angella’s already-straight back straightened slightly by an almost imperceptible amount as she blinked slowly. 

“I beg your pardon?” 

“I - I said yes, my Queen!” Catra stuttered, arching her back in an attempt to mirror Angella as she shot her a wonky smile. Her elbow was resting on the table so she shifted it, but then her fork was hanging off of the plate so she shifted her arm again. She wanted to shift a third time because her arm was uncomfortable in the position it had fallen in, but she would have to deal with that for now. She held the pose for much longer than she was comfortable with as she made eye contact with Angella in a bid to try and persuade her that she had, in fact, called her the Queen. 

Angella arched a single eyebrow and held eye contact with her as though she were sculpted from marble. 

“I’ll go chat with Adora, then, if this meal is over,” Catra said as she began to push her chair out from underneath the table. It was heavy, and it began to make an ungraceful scraping noise until Angella spoke. 

“Save it for tomorrow. You need some rest, and she’ll still be there.” 

Catra nodded, and began walking towards the door at a pace that was trying to be unhurried, but failing spectacularly at it. 

“Oh, and Catra?” 

Catra stopped at the door frame and turned her head back to face the Queen. 

“Yes?” 

“Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've almost finished writing next chapter, where Adora is.... talked to by Catra and the gang - it just needs a redraft or two, but it's meaty. I'd love to hear thoughts about this chapter and analysis or constructive criticism and the like in the comments below, but I'm also interested in predictions! I love to hear from you guys all the time! Writing this is fun, and comments are very validating for me.
> 
> So, until next time (which is hopefully soon!), just remember one thing for me: stay hydrated!


	7. Losing Dogs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I bet on losing dogs_  
>  _I know they're losing and I pay for my place_  
>  _By the ring_  
>  _Where I'll be looking in their eyes when they're down_  
>  _I'll be there on their side_  
>  _I'm losing by their side_
> 
> Guess who learnt HTML just to be extra! I did! On a more serious note, please listen to every Mitski song ever. This one is from I Bet On Losing Dogs, and it's such a Catradora song.
> 
> The chat at the start of this chapter was going to go differently - you've got @thankfullyimgay to thank for me fixing that because I have a habit of mixing up my knowledge and the characters' knowledge ^^'. Now it's a touch more in character and makes a bunch more sense. Thank you, Anna!
> 
> Also, a note on the Geneva Convention, because apparently my fics are just that wild now: the Geneva Convention requires any prisoner of war to give out their name, their rank and their serial number. Americans also have to give out their date of birth, but that's due to individual military guidelines. Now, there's probably no Geneva Convention in Etheria, but I figured that the armies would came to the same logical conclusions that the diplomats came to in the Geneva Convention, meaning that the officers of each army would tell the rank and file a set of guidelines that more or less mimicked the Geneva Convention. That is to say, soldiers only give out their name, rank and serial number due to orders from their superiors and military policy. That's my explanation!
> 
>  **Trigger warning:** implied child abuse, graphic description of scarring. Please heed the tags.

"Catra?”   

Catra was slouching against one of the walls next to the door that led in to the holding cells. Glimmer was waiting there with her, bouncing up and down on her heels as she did so. Bow wasn’t there yet, and the Queen had told them that they had to wait for him before talking to Adora, so they waited together outside the doors.   

It was just the two of them in what was an easy silence, until Glimmer spoke up.   

“Yeah?”   

“Are you sure you should be doing this?”   

Well, Catra had thought it was an easy silence. The look on Glimmer’s face said something else entirely. She was clenching and unclenching her left hand in anxiety as she paced between the walls of the narrow hallway. Her face was scrunched up in what was almost a cute look of anxiety, except it looked almost mortified, especially when paired with the particularly bad case of bedhead she was currently dealing with.   

Catra knew what walking on eggshells both sounded like and felt like.   

“I’ll be fine,” Catra said. She added a sloppy smile behind it to try and put Glimmer at ease, but she just started twisting her fingers in odd directions instead. That couldn’t have been healthy for her fingers.   

“That’s not what I asked, though.” Glimmer’s eyes darted to another part of the room where Catra wasn’t.   

“Me and Adora have history. If anyone’s going to get her to talk, it’s me,” Catra began, but Glimmer jumped in with a -   

“Exactly!”   

Both Catra and Glimmer jumped.   

“The way you two talked when you saved me and Bow – that's your friend in there, Catra! You’re just going to – you'll just – what are you going to do? Waltz in and grab a pair of pliers and start yanking teeth?” Glimmer’s arms were waving in more directions than Catra knew was possible, and she -   

Was she tearing up?   

Catra stood up, supporting her own weight without having to rely on the wall, and began to raise her hand before reconsidering its destination and shoving it deep in to her pocket. It was comfier in there than on Glimmer’s shoulder, anyhow.   

“Yeah. The person whose _job_ it is, Glimmer, is me. Did you forget that while you were warming the throne?” Catra said, almost spitting as she balled her fist up in her pocket. Her nails were beginning to dig in to her palm, but it was helping to ground her and bring her back to reality.   

“Hey! I’m not the one who’s about to interrogate my ex!” Glimmer said as she began to walk towards Catra. She came right up close to her so that her nose was inches away from Catra’s chest, her finger jabbing up to her neck. It was the walk of someone who had fully expected the other person to backtrack as they went toe to toe, but Catra had no intention of moving.   

Glimmer glared up at Catra in what Catra could only assume was meant to be a threatening gesture, but it was a poor mimicry of a three year old’s death stare. Catra just sighed as Glimmer breathed more and more heavily through her nose.   

“If I don’t interrogate Adora,” Catra said slowly, sounding out the words as she tried to stay calm, “we’ll never know how, or why, she’s lost her memories. If we know the root of the problem, we can start to fix it. Do you understand?”   

“Don’t patronise me,” Glimmer said as she took a half-step back. “Anyone could get that information out of her. It doesn’t have to be you.”   

“No, it doesn’t.”   

Glimmer blinked and took another half-step back as Catra agreed with her.   

“But I’m the only one who’s going to succeed.”  

\---  

The first thing that struck Catra about the holding cell was how small it was. There was hardly enough room to stand up and pace around in the dingy square feet that Adora was sitting in. She had her back against the wall, head bowed down as her legs lay uselessly against the floor. There was maybe five feet between the close-knit cell bars and her standard issue boots.  

She almost didn’t notice when the two guards tasked with keeping the prisoner walked outside to wait by the door. 

It really wasn’t the most glamorous places to be. Catra surprised herself with how often she came back to that singular thought as the feeling of absurdity kept breaking the surface of her many conflicting emotions and taking precedent above the rest of them. There were three cells, side by side, with thick, grey cinderblock walls separating each of them. Each cell had one small window, which was a square foot at most. It was well above eye level, and there were so many bars crammed in to that small space that it was nearly impossible for the sunlight to lazily filter through it. The area outside of the cells had no furniture whatsoever. The walls were decorated (if you could call it decoration) with two minimalist sconces that held two lit torches and provided most of the area with light.  

In the forefront of her mind, Catra attributed this surprise with her previous comparisons to the Horde. The grass was always greener in the rebellion – things were cleaner, less oppressive and sparklier than the Horde had ever been, so why would the cells be an exception?  

In the back of her mind, though, Catra couldn’t quite quash the feeling that her objections to Adora’s conditions were solely due to the fact that Adora deserved better. Adora had always deserved better.  

Catra crouched down in front of Adora’s cell as Glimmer and Bow stood further back, almost clinging to the walls. They looked as uncomfortable as she felt in this situation, but she wasn’t about to let it show.  

Adora still hadn’t lifted her head.  

“Hey, Adora.”  

“Adora, Force Captain, 27493.”  

“And I’m Catra, Cadet, 27494. Now that we’ve exchanged pleasantries, do you want to have a chat?"  

Adora’s head lifted slightly in surprise. They made eye contact for a brief second before Adora sighed and dropped her eyes back down to the floor as she ground her teeth in to her lip. Catra could see the anger at being beaten so easily simmering just below the surface of her eyes, but Adora slowly dragged her eyes back to the floor in an unsurprisingly ineffective attempt to disengage with her.  

“Do you remember when we were young and would play out by the water?” Catra asked as she tilted her head to look under the crook of Adora’s neck. “There was that pond that was near the edge of the woods, right on the border. We were only kids, so we wouldn’t have been brave enough to go in to the woods, but we loved playing in that pond. It was the one that was surrounded by the really smooth boulders that were coated in moss. Do you remember?”  

Adora was silent as she twisted her face away from Catra.  

“I hope you do. I remember. I remember the warm summer days when we used to feel as though we would melt in to the ground itself, and I remember the cool breezes that rescued us. I remember discovering that pond and looking at the fish it held. Your favourite was the golden one. It was as long as my arm and as fat as anything, and it was always there whenever we went to visit. Do you remember my favourite fish?”  

Adora looked as though she was going to move her head, but she had frozen, each muscle in her body tensed in a desperate bid not to move, to deny even the slightest twitch a chance of escaping.  

“It was the patchwork one. The white one that had orange, black and gold splattered all across its back. You saw it first. You pointed your finger at it and said ‘Hey! That one’s just like you!’ We named him Patchy, in the end.”  

Catra was chuckling at this point, but tears were threatening to well up in her eyes as painful memories clawed their way back in to her mind. When had she become so prone to crying?  

“Anyway, I jumped in the pond because I wanted to pet him,” Catra continued, leaving out the fact that she also wanted to impress Adora.  

“But I couldn’t swim.  

“You couldn’t swim either. I just jumped in, and I didn’t warn you. I sunk like a stone as I tried to get closer to the fish until I realised I couldn’t breathe, and then I started thrashing hopelessly around. Moving was hard. My arms were so slow, Adora. Even bathing doesn’t come close to how isolated you feel when you’re that deep under. I could hear you shout, but it was distorted and you sounded a hundred miles away. I could see you, but not all of you.  

“That’s what got me, in the end. I could see you, but I couldn’t reach you.”  

Catra paused as she tried to gauge Adora’s reaction. She was being annoyingly quiet, scrunched up in a ball against the far wall as a distant look graced her face. A spark of recognition was trying to bloom in her eyes, but something was stopping it. She was trying so hard to remember, to understand what Catra was talking about, but she was failing in every way possible.  

It was strange to see Adora fail.  

“You ended up saving me. You rushed over and knelt by the side of the pond and stuck your hand deep in to the water, so far that you dunked your head in to get closer to me. I remember your fingers closing around my forearm as mine did the same to yours, and you pulled me up from where I was. You hauled me out on to the river bank and we lay down in the dust, not caring if it stuck to the wet parts of us, and just caught our breath as we basked like lizards in the heat of the summer’s day.  

“Do you remember that?”  

Slowly, Adora shook her head.  

Catra’s shoulders slumped as she pressed her nails in to the cold, stone floor. Of course she didn’t remember – why would she have? It had been ridiculous of her to hold out hope like that.  

“So you don’t remember what Shadow Weaver did to us after she found out we had been sneaking to the pond either, then? When we came back wet and covered in dirt? Do you remember what she did?” Catra asked as her hand shakily rose to the strap of her mask. It arced around the sides of her head, framing her face perfectly. In theory, it had protected her from a few stray blows that had come at her sideways, and hurt anyone with the audacity to try and hook her face.  

Adora stayed silent again, and Catra took that as a no as she undid the clasp that secured it. It fell off and clattered on to the floor. The sound of the mask rattling pierced the holding cells. Adora’s attention was first brought to the red metal, but her eyes soon rose to run up and down the length of Catra’s face.  

People saw Catra without the mask on, of course. The communal showers had ensured that what it hid was excruciatingly public knowledge, but she still did everything she could to minimise the time her full face was out in the open. She was fairly sure that none of the rebellion knew what she was underneath the mask, except for maybe Glimmer, but Catra was fairly sure that Glimmer was somewhat distracted when she had saw her naked.  

“Shadow Weaver did this to me, and nothing to you.”  

On the left side of Catra's face, from her cheekbone to the bottom of her ear was a mass of scar tissue that made it difficult for Adora to pinpoint exactly where the initial wound had been. It was twisted in pale clumps, like gnarled and knotted tree roots, and rose at least a centimetre off of her face - easily more than that in some places. The scar was devoid of any of the peach fuzz that enveloped Catra’s face and body, but the transition from fur to rough skin was anything but smooth. There were patches and tufts of fur that were left scattered around the edges, twisted outliers of hair that stood alone against bare skin. 

Catra pretended not to hear Bow’s gasp or Glimmer’s sharp breath, and pointedly ignored Adora’s flinch.  

“That,” Catra said as she tapped the scar on the side of her face, “came after Shadow Weaver had punished me. This one,” she continued as she tapped her forehead, “was of Shadow Weaver’s own design. She made sure it looked exactly how she wanted it to look.”  

The scar running across her forehead was again a dense mass of scar tissue that easily rose a centimetre off of Catra’s face, but instead of being dense and overgrown, it instead made its way across her forehead in waves and spirals that circled in on themselves and seemed to fall deeper than where Catra’s natural skin level should be; for every segment of scar that rose above Catra’s skin, there was an equal amount that appeared to sink below the skin. There were threads of the scar that could be followed, like writhing tentacles that were independent and autonomous, but came together to form a pale and grotesque painting that conveyed only pain. Just like the first scar, no hair grew atop it, but unlike the first scar, the down of Catra’s skin sat flush to the edges of the scar in an effortless transition from face to wound. 

Catra had joked that hers was a face that even a mother couldn’t love, considering the fact that her own adoptive mother had given them to her.  

“She only did it the once. I assume that she had had it all bottled up for some time, because she really did a number on me. Whatever the reason, Hordak forbade her from ever doing it again, but it was too late. I got these. How many scars have you got, Adora?”  

Adora again twisted uncomfortably as she tried to look at any place that wasn’t Catra’s face, but her eyes were continuously drawn to the scars like magnets. She shifted as she clenched and unclenched her hand, her lip almost splitting under the pressure she was putting on it as she bit down.  

“Adora. Force Captain. 27493.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ^^  
> I hope you liked it! I took a bunch of inspiration from the imagery they use in Bloom into You (a very good manga and an outstanding anime). I obviously took liberties with worldbuilding and the past, but I've been doing that for the whole damn fic, so it's nothing new.
> 
> As always, I really wanna hear your comments. I wanna know what you thought and what you liked, even if its just a keysmash. Jokes, predictions and venting is all very welcome! I'm here to answer questions and keep on plowing away at writing this fic (it'll be the death of me, I swear ^^').
> 
> So, thank you for reading! It's beginning to get hot outside, so remember: stay hydrated!
> 
> Edit: changed one instance of Glimmer referring to Adora as Catra's friend to Catra's ex


	8. Micah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I realise it's been a month, but I wasn't happy with this chapter due to the amount fo exposition in it and my general discomfort with dialogue. Eventually, I had to bite the bullet and go "heck it, it has to be good enough" because I've got to move on. So, apologies if it's a substandard chapter.
> 
> Secondly, thanks to Anna! She's @thankfullyimgay, and she picked up on typos and really helped encourage me to put this out there.
> 
> This chapter mainly concerns Catra and Angella bonding, as well as a bit of backstory. I've taken some artistic liberties, as the new spop doesn't tell us much about Micah and I haven't watched the old She-Ra. So, without any further adieu, here it is!

The mural was beautiful.

Basked in moonlight, it was etched in to the lilac walls that lined the hallways of Brightmoon Castle, even though the piece appeared to protrude outwards from the wall at first glance. The artist clearly knew what they were doing, as a sense of majesty was sculpted where the artist had etched away entire segments in shallower scrapes to create blocks of shading. Love had been poured in to the creation of the mural, and the same sense of love poured outwards from it and in to any bystanders.

The man depicted looked to be a solid man with wide shoulders with a cape that added to the overwhelming sense of size that Catra felt by simply looking at him. In one hand, he held a half-moon sceptre, and the other was outstretched with the palm open and upwards, ready and expectant.

Or, perhaps, he was showing someone something.

His hair was at the length where it wasn’t long, per se, but it wasn’t short either. He looked as though he were growing it out, or had neglected a haircut for slightly too long. There were short, stylistic flecks that stuck out that were almost curls, but seemed to look more like bedhead to Catra. His beard was similarly dishevelled – even on a stylistic mural that was anything but realistic, it was still obvious that this was a man who was naturally scruffy.

Despite that, he was still the most alluring mural in the corridor of murals, and that was saying something, because Catra had already walked past dozens of murals by the time she came to this one.

She had walked many of the hallways in the castle recently during the last week. She had been scouting out all of the nooks and crannies as an alternative to lying awake in bed and staring at the ceiling, and even though she hadn’t even covered half of the castle’s grounds, she had decided that the murals were her favourite place to be.

Looking at the heroic faces took her mind off of Adora, at least.

It had been a week and she had still said nothing.

She had tried everything. She had told anecdote after anecdote, been angry, been kind, and tried every angle she could think of. Glimmer had talked to her, Bow had talked to her, and the guards had talked to her. The only option left now was to play the waiting game and hope she cracked under pressure, which Catra would rather avoid.

After everything, Catra still couldn’t bring herself to hurt her.

Being alone in the corridors was far preferable to bring alone in bed, because at least the corridors didn’t remind her of Adora. At least she had the people on the walls and their unblinking, all-knowing and all-seeing eyes to keep her company.

At least, she  _ was  _ alone. The clicking of heels on the cold, stone floors of the castle echoed throughout the corridor, and Catra tensed up and almost slinked away in to the night.

Almost.

The footsteps weren’t guards’ footsteps. They would have been heavier and deeper, each step carrying with it five tonnes of metal and enough clanking to wake the dead up. These were slow, unhurried steps, coming from a pair of heels.

There was only one person who would ostensibly be wearing heels at half two in the morning.

Queen Angella walked up beside Catra and stood next to her, turning to face the mural alongside her. She was wearing her regal outfit, but it seemed far more relaxed. Her pace was slower, she lacked any courtiers and she lazily held an orb of pink light in her left hand which lit up the artwork beautifully as she approached. 

“Good evening,” Angella said as she stopped next to Catra to admire the art.

“Good morning,” Catra replied.

Angella’s painfully neutral face cracked in to the slightest of smiles as she heard Catra greet her.

“What are you doing, looking at art in the dead of night? Reading up on our history?” Angella asked, almost playfully. Catra simply snorted and held back a laugh.

“Couldn’t sleep. What about you, Queenie?”

Catra almost flinched as she called Angella a nickname – it seemed so undignified and below her, but she had to test the waters at some point, and now was as good as any a time to do so. Angella simply kept her lazy smile.

“Much the same, Whiskers. I like coming to this mural when I can’t sleep.”

“It’s better than the others.”

“How so?” Angella asked as she cocked an eyebrow, tearing her eyes from the man on the mural to glance down at Catra.

“It feels more real. Less like propaganda. This man feels like an actual person, like there’s a personality behind him,” Catra said, and she paused for half a second for a single breath before deciding to continue.

“I mean, it’s so much less symbolic. He’s got, what, a staff and a big cape? The guy down there,” Catra said as she gestured down the corridor, “had light emitting from his eyes as he hovered over a battlefield, and another guy had five legs. I mean, come on! Five legs? Four or six I might have been able to believe, but five?”

It was at that point Angella laughed. It was a slow, gracious affair. Her laugh was drawn out and high pitched, like running your hand across silk that was pressed firmly on to a warm table. It egged Catra on, giving her permission to continue that she didn’t even need.

“I can see why  _ they’re _ your heroes. If I had to fight old five-legs back there, what could I do? You sweep the leg, but the bugger’s got four others he can use! He’s probably fast as hell to boot. Laser-eye could probably, I don’t know, laser eye you, but this guy’s just a dude! I could be that guy!”

Catra grinned up at Angella as her hushed voice gradually rose in volume, her gestures getting faster and more animated until she reached her finale. Angella was simply laughing, a sound which petered out a good few seconds after Catra had finished.

“Yes, I will admit that many of the other portraits are symbolic. ‘Five-legs’, as you call him, was the fastest warrior ever to walk Etheria. He was a blur; he could dart from one side of the battlefield to the other simply to block a strike, and be back in time to counter-attack his original foe.”

Angella’s voice gradually moved from one of humour to one of reserved reverence as she spoke. There was no shortage of admiration, either, as she gave an impromptu lesson on history in the middle of the hall of murals.

“What about laser-eye?” Catra asked.

“Well, he could emit surges of light from his eyes. They were blindingly bright. The issue was, they blinded him as well – but he was loathe to admit that to anyone, and it was one of his best kept secrets. He learnt how to fight while blind specifically to combat this, until he could consistently light up his eyes, blinding his enemies and giving himself the advantage. He was one of the most tenacious men I’ve ever met.”

“You knew him?” Catra asked with no small amount of surprise, turning away from the mural to face Angella directly.

“I knew most people in this hall,” Angella said. Her eyes lost the slightest gleam as she admitted this, her face turning ever so slightly downcast as though the memories of them were accompanied by a harrowing sense of grief.

“So you knew this guy too?” Catra asked, pressing onwards as she lazily gestured to the mural in front of them with her left hand.

“You... don’t?” Angella said, her brow furrowing in confusion.

“I don’t know anyone here,” Catra said with an equal amount of confusion. “Why would I?”

“Then why did you choose this mural to look at?”

“I told you, it feels less like propaganda and more like love.”

A smile slowly crept on to Angella’s face.

“This was not made for proaganda. This man is King Micah, Glimmer’s father, whom I love very much.”

Catra's eyes suddenly widened as a smile sprung on to her face.

“Glimmer has a dad? That’s so cool! Where -”

“Had. Only the dead find themselves in this hallway.”

With one word, Catra’s excitement was undercut as she felt a cold needle pierce her stomach and deflate her.

_ Had. _

Catra looked back up to Queen Angella and saw that her smile was melancholy, her eyes downcast and her shoulders slumped. The subject of Micah was a bittersweet one, it would seem – that much was clear to Catra simply by the way Angella looked at the mural.

It wasn’t merely admiration, or awe, or reverence.

It was longing.

“I’m sorry,” Catra said, but it didn’t feel like enough.

“Don’t be. You couldn’t have known. He’s been gone since Glimmer was small – he was very ill for a long time, and this mural was made after his funeral. He was beloved in the kingdom, and I like to think that this mural proves how much he meant to the people of Brightmoon.”

Catra slowly nodded, and instantly felt ridiculous. Queen Angella didn’t need her approval on a subject she had only just learnt about.

“Yeah.”

Catra, for better or for worse, was curious, and after a moments indecision she decided to press ahead and ask a rather blunt and personal question.

“What was he ill with?”

“Early onset dementia. His father had it, and his father before him, but they had all reached sixty or seventy before they began suffering. Micah’s symptoms starting coming through three years after Glimmer’s birth, so he must have been...” Angella trailed off for a moment as her brow furrowed, drudging up old memories to try and pinpoint the exact point in time it had all begun.

“Forty-two. He was forty-two when it began, and fifty when he died.”

“So Glimmer was eleven?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, she remembers his bad days more than his good days, because he only got worse as they both got older. Sometimes, I wish that I could show her how loving a man he was, and that her perceptions of him are just warped. I know that she, too, thinks the world of him, but she never got to truly experience what it was like to be by his side without a cloud of dread hanging over your head.”

“I’m sorry,” Catra said, and again it felt like an insignificant gesture in the face of an unfathomable discomfort.

“Don’t be. We all have our trials in life; this is simply ours.”

They stood in silence for so long that they both lost track of the time. Angella looked at the mural, taking in the art and the memories that it invoked, and Catra lost herself in the easy silence and fellowship she felt from being near Angella like this.

Catra didn’t know how long it had been before she spoke.

“Have you heard back from that sister magic woman yet?”  Catra asked, breaking the silence that had settled along the hallway like a warm blanket.  Angella didn’t answer immediately – instead, she simply continued to stare at the mural for so long that  Catra wasn’t sure if she had heard her or not.  Catra was almost going to ask again before she got a reply.

“ Castaspella ?”

“That’s the one.”

“Yes,”  Angella replied in a slow, steady voice.

“And? Does she know how to break the spell?”  Catra asked as she span on her heels to look directly at  Angella .  Angella continued to look at the mural, but  Catra could see the heavy look on her face clearer now. She was nowhere near as excited as  Catra was, and that sent alarm bells resonating through  Catra’s spine that she desperately tried to  suppress .

“How much do you know about magic?”  Angella asked softly.

“I -” Why was she asking that? “Next to nothing.”

“You’ll need some background understanding to understand what she’s told me. I’ll try and give you the basics.”  Angella went silent again for far too long as she mulled on how to phrase whatever it  is she had to say, and  Catra started to bounce on the balls of her feet. She moved to cracking her knuckles, and then to bending her fingers backwards before circling around to bouncing again as she waited.

“Every time you cast a spell,”  Angella began, speaking in a tone of voice akin to a lecturer, “you’re creating a deal with the world. You’re giving the world something in return for something else. For instance, Glimmer gives the world the energy from her runestone in return for the ability to teleport. That’s why it’s possible for her to run out of energy.”

“So?”

“So,”  Angella continued as a slight annoyance crept in to her voice, “it’s a legal contract. When you begin to cast a spell, it’s vital you have all of the details in place. One of those is like a get-out clause. It lets you stop the spell and reverse it. Every spell should have one – it lets Glimmer stop teleporting, for instance, or lets sorceresses reverse long lasting magical effects.”

“Like amnesia?”  Catra asked.

“Yes, like amnesia.”

“ So you’ve found out how to reverse the spell? How hard is it? How long will it -”

“The issue,”  Angella continued firmly, “is that many sorceresses make their get-out clauses very difficult to find so that their spells cannot be countered easily. That’s usually not a problem, as I’m an accomplished sorceress. Finding the get-out clause to reverse the spell usually isn’t the issue; the issue tends to be the terms and conditions to its fulfilment.”

“Right, so what are the terms and conditions?”

“I cannot find the clause.”

“What?”  Catra felt a cold weight spread through her arms as they went numb, sinking in to her fingertips and taking all life out of them. “ Castaspella hasn’t even looked at her yet, you can’t say that for sure. You can’t just take someone’s memory from them.”

“There’s usually two get-out clauses.  When you cast a fire spell, for instance, there’s an escape clause that allows you to stop casting the spell, and another one that prevents the fire from burning for all of eternity. We’re looking for the second, and it simply isn’t there.”

“But -”

“ Catra .” The hallway went silent, and for the first time  Catra truly realised the gravity of the situation.

“Who  cast this spell?”

“Shadow Weaver,”  Catra replied. The word was laced with more hatred than  Angella had ever heard before. There was such concentrated spite contained within the two words that  Angella almost had to take a step back.

“Are you sure?”

“It has to be. She’s the only sorceress in the Horde, and she has the Black Garnet, so -”

“She has the what?”

“The Black Garnet,”  Catra repeated.

“ Catra , I need you to tell me exactly what the Black Garnet looks like.”

“It, uh, it’s this big stone,”  Catra began with mild confusion. “It’s red and jagged and it’s the size of a room. It has all of these wires attached to it, and Shadow Weaver uses it to cast spells and stuff.”

Angella pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers as her face turned from an expression of mourning to one of frustration.

“That’s a runestone. The Horde has a runestone. The amnesia spell was cast  _ using  _ a runestone.”  Angella removed her hand from her face and gently placed it on  Catra’s shoulder with an air of regal authority.

“ Catra ,  the chances of Adora recovering her memories are minimal.”

“You - you can’t say that. You can’t say that!”  Catra took a step back as she brushed  Angella’s hand off of her shoulder. “We - there’s got to be something we can try.”

“Sometimes, in life, we -”

“I don’t want a lecture about the hardships of life!”  Catra yelled, and her voice echoed down the hallway before dissipating in to an uneasy silence.

“I want my friend.” It was little more than a hoarse whisper, but she was sure that Angella would have heard it.

“She’s still the same person she was before, even without the memories you shared. It won’t be easy – God knows, it’ll be one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do, but the sooner you accept that this is the way things will be, the sooner you can work on trying to rebuild your relationship.”

“What about the sword?”  Catra asked as her eyes lit up, pointedly ignoring everything  Angella had just said. Angella simply blinked.

“What about it?”

“It might jog her memory.”

“ Catra -”

“She asked me to go and get it because she couldn’t stop thinking about it! Besides,  its got a runestone as well, so the sword runestone might overpower the Black Garnet, and -”

“That’s not how magic works. Adora won’t be able to use the runestone.”

“But it’s not me! If I’m the only thing gone from her memory, maybe the sword will bypass it!”

“ Catra ,”  Angella asked, “you do understand why I’m hesitant about giving our enemy a weapon, let alone giving our enemy the Sword of Protection, which is our greatest  artefact ?”

“I’ve got to try. It was the last thing she ever asked me to do, so I’ve got to try.” She could feel herself begin to dissolve in to a blubbering, stammering mess, but before she could, Angella intervened.

“Fine. You may give her the sword, but you’re to get it back. And, as usual, it has to be with Bow  anD Glimmer.”

“Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hohohoho! The plot thiccens. I hope my explanation of magic was easy enough to understand - if it isn't please tell me in the comments. As always, I'm appreciative of all comments. Even if I don't always reply, I read them all and they keep me going.
> 
> Also, on an entirely unrelated note, "that guy's just a dude!" has to be my favourite line I've ever written.
> 
> So, until next time, stay hydrated!


	9. Fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one! This time named after yet another Mistki song, because those are all Catra moods!
> 
> So, first of all, thank you to Anna. She beta'd this, as usual, because I may or may not have accidently created words. However, she also helped me talk through some stuff in regards to this fic and helped me get my motivation back, which was incredibly helpful, so thank you.
> 
> This chapter has it all - bonding moments and other, redacted stuff. I'm a lot more confident about this chapter, so, enjoy!

“Run it past me one more time.” 

Bow was standing outside of the holding cells with Glimmer and Catra, his hands placed firmly together in a position that almost resembled praying. Glimmer yawned and stretched her arms outwards dramatically as he spoke before interrupting herself. 

“And tell us why we’re up so early. The sun only just rose!” 

Glimmer did have a severe case of bedhead, Catra noticed. 

“Ok, so I spoke to Angella -” 

“My mum,” Glimmer said, almost as though she were clarifying a contentious point. 

“Yes, your mum. We both know Angella is your mum, did you really need to -” 

“Just making sure it was the same Angella.” 

“How many Angellas are there? Do you really -” 

“Ok,” Bow interrupted as he physical stood between the two of them. “Let's stop bickering and stay on track. You spoke to Angella, and then?” 

“And then she said that she can’t reverse the spell that Adora’s under.” 

“Is that why you haven’t slept?” Glimmer asked. She was clearly holding back a yawn as she did, the muscles going tense in her jaw as she did so. It was true, though – Catra hadn’t slept a wink since hearing the news about Adora. She wanted to go and wake Bow and Glimmer up there and then, like a sick mimicry of a child on Christmas morning, but she had waited until now to drag them to the cells. 

“I’ve slept perfectly fine!” Catra lied dishonestly. 

“Catra, you’ve got more bags under your eyes than they have at a backpacker’s convention,” Bow pointed out, entirely unhelpfully. 

“That’s besides the point -” 

“Don’t deflect!” Glimmer said as she sprung past Bow, knocking him back a couple of uneven steps as her hands clasped tightly on to Catra’s shoulders. Catra, for her part, tried to backpedal as Bow had done, prying the fingers off of her shoulders before she even knew what she was doing. 

“My sleep schedule has nothing to do with this!” Catra said, and with a final step Glimmer finally yielded and let go, placing her hands deep in to her pockets instead. 

“Fine.” 

Bow placed a hand on her shoulder in reconciliation. “So, her memories are... gone?” 

“Bow!” Glimmer yelled. Glimmer had a habit of yelling when she was right next to a person’s ear, and muttering when she was on the other side of the room. “You can’t just ask if she’s lost all of her memories!” 

“I mean – she has, yes, but we’ve got one more shot,” Catra said as a sly, somewhat desperate grin crept on to her face. 

“And that’s where the sword comes in?” Bow asked as he looked to the sword with more than a small amount of scepticism. It was strapped to Catra’s back like a guitar, the sheathe for it lazily slung over her shoulder as straps and pieces of leather tangled with each other and flew astray everywhere. 

“Yes,” Catra said, “that’s where the sword comes in.” 

“And how,” Bow continued, “does giving our enemy the Sword of Protection help us?” 

“You all seem to be getting caught on the sword part. Forget it’s a sword for a moment.” 

“No,” Glimmer said simply. 

She did not say anything else as Catra raised an eyebrow, her hands frozen in the air as she waited for Glimmer to continue. 

“No?” Catra asked. 

“What if she attacks us?” 

It was a valid fear, all things considered. Adora was, for better or worse, the enemy. She was imprisoned, and it made logical sense that she might attack them if given a weapon. 

“There’s bars between us and her,” Catra reasoned. “How can she try anything?” 

“And if she doesn’t give the sword back?” Bow asked. He still had his hand on Glimmer’s shoulder, but she had moved to nestle in to him like a baby chick nestling in to its mother for warmth during a storm. 

“She’ll have to. We can just, like, not give her food or something.” 

“That’s mean,” Glimmer muttered. 

“So is not giving the sword back,” Catra replied. 

“Why are we giving her the sword again?” Bow’s brow was furrowed as he desperately tried to perform the mental gymnastics to understand Catra’s point of view. 

“The last thing she ever asked me to do was get this sword for her. I want to give it to her because it’ll either jog her memory, or I’ll fulfil her final request.” 

Both Bow and Glimmer went silent. Glimmer peeled herself off of Bow and straightened her back, and Catra could hear the clicks resonating through her from five feet away. Bow simply nodded gravely. 

“Right,” Bow said. 

“Right,” Glimmer agreed. 

“We get it now, I think.” 

Catra sighed a slight sigh of relief as she cracked out in to a smile. 

“Ok, so we go in there, give her this sword, and hope that it jogs her memory. Any questions?” 

\--- 

The sword lay in front of Adora, who barely rose her head to look at it. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back against the far wall under the window as her head slumped downwards towards the floor. It was impossible to tell in the dim light if she was asleep or merely ignoring them. 

“Hey, Adora,” Catra began. Adora’s chest rose slightly in response as a sigh escaped her nose, but other than that she showed little signs of response. 

“I know you can hear us,” Glimmer said, chipping in and she stepped forward. Catra shot her a look and she stepped immediately back, but it had done the job – Adora had begun to fidget. Her leg was moving as though no position it found itself in was comfortable, scooting to the side and back every few seconds as Adora continued to keep her eyes firmly shut. 

“Adora,” Catra said again, but this time it was with the tone of a mother waking a child with the news of freshly baked brownies. “Come on, wake up!” 

Adora’s leg began to move faster. 

“We’ve got a present for you.” 

Adora’s leg froze and stopped moving all together. A single eye slowly cracked open, as though the others wouldn’t see Adora opening it if she moved slowly enough. The trio outside of the cell played along, not mentioning how she was opening it, but when she saw the sword both of Adora’s eyes shot open. 

She opened her mouth as though she was going to say something, but then seemingly remembered that she wasn’t allowed to say anything, so she promptly shut it again. The only sound in the room was the slow dripping of condensation off of the mossy cobblestone roof on to the smooth, stone floor. 

“It’s a sword,” Catra pointed out helpfully. Adora looked at her in a slight confusion as her eyes narrowed almost as if to scold her for stating the blatantly obvious. Of _course_ it was a sword. 

“You’re allowed to have it for five minutes, according to the Queen,” Catra continued, “but we’re going to need it back after that.” Adora cocked a single eyebrow. “Her rules, not mine.” 

With all the grace of a stone statue that had been sculpted by a frog, Adora slowly sat up. She stretched her legs outwards, each foot resting on either side of the hilt as her body continued to slump forward. She looked like she was about to move in to a gymnastic stretch, but she didn’t reach for her toes. Instead, she just gazed at the sword. 

She stared at the gem set in to the hilt, and admired the crystalline blue that had managed to remain untarnished. Her eyes ran up and down the guard, picking up on the finer details of the golden wings as she licked her lips. 

Catra could see Adora's desire to try and figure out why she had a sword in front of her clash with her desire to grab the sword and try it out. The glint in her eyes and the twitching of her fingers betrayed her anticipation, and she began to swallow heavily. 

It was a sword, and it was hers. 

Adora’s eyes rose to meet Catra’s in a questioning glance, but Catra offered no answers. She merely raised a single eyebrow as if to say, “Well? Are you going to try it out?” 

Adora placed a steady hand on her right knee and placed her left leg underneath her, slowly rising from the ground. Catra could almost swear that there were particles of dust sweeping off of her, which gave her an almost holy glow in the dim light of the cell. She rolled her shoulder backwards twice while kneading it with her left hand and then, very slowly and without taking her eyes off of Catra, crouched back down to take the sword. 

Catra, Glimmer and Bow waited in anticipation, but they did not know what it is they were anticipating. 

Adora’s fingers closed around the hilt of the sword. They tightened in to a comfortable grip as she stood back up, straightening her back and lifting the sword up and down. Nothing had happened, but the sword looked as though it had been made for her. She swung it, and it cut through the air as though it were perfectly weighted for her, and even the length was such that she could comfortably lean on it while the tip was balanced on the ground. 

“Damn,” Catra spat. She turned her head to the side as her hands began clawing at her own neck, scratching as she tried to hide her frustration. Nothing had happened. 

And then, everything happened. 

A blinding light flooded the room, and with it came a blast that bent the cell’s bars outwards and obliterated the back of the cell to rubble. What was left of the window was twisted metal that plunged into the remnants of a brick wall, and in the distance Catra could just about hear the faint sound of a brick landing on soft grass as it scattered away from them. 

The blast had knocked Catra back a step, but she had managed to stay on her feet, with her forearm shielding her eyes from the worst of the light. Bow was knocked on to his back almost immediately, and Glimmer’s back simply hit the wall as she was hoisted up, her feet three inches from the ground as she was pinned. When Catra blinked the light from her eyes, Adora was gone. 

In her place was a woman who was glowing, although it seemed ridiculous to acknowledge that at the time. She was easily seven foot tall and made of pure muscle, with her pristine white outfit clinging to each of the well-defined muscles, almost as though she were showing them off. She stood like a sculpted goddess with her back straight and her sword hoisted in the air effortlessly by one hand. 

Her face, however, seemed as though it didn’t belong to her body. 

Physically, it was just as beautiful as the rest of her, as though the Gods had made her in their likeness, but her brow was furrowed and her eyes looked distant. She too was looking around her now, almost as though she had just realised where she was, and that was when Catra became aware of the fact that she was not, in fact, looking at a painting. The scene in front of her was real, and the prisoner was about to escape. 

“Glimmer! The sword!” 

Glimmer staggered forward, hunched over herself as she looked at the woman and tried to ignore the building pain in her back. Catra noticed that something thick and red was oozing from the back of her head and was causing her hair to become matted and clumped, but she didn’t pay any mind to that, not now. The woman (not, Catra pointedly reminded herself, Adora) looked at the sword, looked at Glimmer, and then looked at the wall that was no longer behind her before hefting the sword back and throwing it as though it were a baseball. 

She clearly had incredibly strength. 

It flew for a hundred, maybe two hundred feet before landing in the far distance, a mere glint of light in the horizon by that point. Catra rushed forward and stuck a single hand through the bars of the cell, but they weren’t bent anywhere near enough to let her though. Her face was pressed desperately against the cold iron as her shoulder forced its way through the gap, her nails mere inches from the tall woman who had taken Adora. 

The woman looked to the nails and followed Catra’s arm until her eyes rested on her face. There was an emotion in her eyes that Catra couldn’t pinpoint – anger, confusion, hurt, fear, and betrayal all ran through Catra’s mind as she tried to think of something, anything, to say to the woman, but all that she managed to force out of her mouth was another “Glimmer!” 

The woman opened her mouth to say something - 

And then she was gone. 

With an almost lacklustre flash of light, Adora was standing where she had stood, and her mouth clamped shut as she looked out of the cell. She ran, placing a foot where the wall once was and jumping down to scale the castle walls and escape. 

At that moment, Glimmer decided to finally teleported in to the cell with a pink flash and no small amount of sparkles. She looked hazily from Adora to where the sword had been thrown, and then staggered forward and disappeared again. 

Catra simply knelt down, resting her face against the iron bars of the cell as she tried to take in what had just happened. Somewhere, she registered faintly that a tear was rolling down her cheek, but all she all she could think of was Adora. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you realise that the entire chapter is written from Catra's point of view, it becomes very gay. As always, I appreciate nice comments and keysmashes and theories and the like in the comments section! I might be able to write a bit more in the coming weeks, but no guarantees!
> 
> Until I see you all next time, remember to stay hydrated!


	10. The She-Ra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catra deals with the startling new discovery in regards to her childhood best friend and a hero of legend.
> 
> Anna had a massive input on this chapter. She suggested some turns of phrase and a crucial word that helped me shift the chapter in to more of what I was envisioning, and it showed me that I wanted to lean in to the themes I wanted to lean in to. She's @thankfullyimgay on tumblr, and without being able to discuss this with her and have her cheer me on relentlessly, I wouldn't be updating this fic for another month or so :p. So, make sure to say thanks to Anna!
> 
> This one is a bit on the shorter side, but I have 3 short scenes I want to do, one after another, and it makes more sense to lump the next two together as opposed to this and the next one. Trust me, you'll love all 3!
> 
> So, without any further adieu, I present: Chapter 10, The She-Ra!

The smell of disinfectant was overpowering.

Catra was sitting in a small ward that was tucked in to a far corner of the castle. She was sitting in a bed , slumped against two pillows. Glimmer was to her right, lying down with multiple layers of gauze and bandages wrapped around her head which she had decorated with red splotches, her eyes open and vaguely watching the ceiling. Bow was to her left, sleeping.

Catra lifted her hand up and looked at it with a mild curiosity in an attempt to feel something. To feel anything. Had her hands always looked like that? There was less fur than she had remembered. Or was she remembering wrong?

Catra felt hollow.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that. The doctor was an old man with wispy white hair, a long, knotted beard and a walking stick that smelt of wood polish. He looked like he lived in a cosy cottage in the middle of the woods as opposed to opening and closing flesh wounds for a living, but he had treated all three of them, so he was clearly a real person.

He had told her that crying released cortisol from the body, which resulted in a cathartic experience and a lessening of stress.  Catra didn’t understand most of those words, but she was to be bed ridden for another day so that the nurses could keep an eye on her ‘shock’.

It wasn’t as if she’d have known what to do if she were allowed to roam free, anyway.

Somebody had left the door open a crack. Noises kept on sneaking in as people rushed to and from rooms and important meetings like bees, the entire castle abuzz as everyone seemed to be doing everything.

No, that was unfair.

Bees had a purpose. They banded together in times of strife for the greater good, for the good of the hive.  Catra’s logical mind told her that there was no possible way that  Angella would allow this many people to know of the existence of the She-Ra, as  Glimmer had called it .  Her.  The people flitting by the door were more like mayflies. They were loud, big and annoying, circling around the ward as their buzzing got louder and louder.

There had been a kid in the Horde, once, who could kill a mayfly at twenty paces with a rubber band with unnerving accuracy. He had never missed, and  it never failed to impress the other cadets, especially -

The door opened and  Angella swept in to the room, closely dogged by the same doctor that had treated them earlier. Glimmer began to sit up, which looked like an arduous process, but  Angella sat on the bed next to her and simply laid a hand on her forehead.

“Shh,” she whispered. “It’s alright, lie down. How are you feeling?”

Catra’s brow furrowed at the sheer amount of tender, motherly care that was present in  Angella’s voice.

“You must understand that Glimmer has a concussion, Your Majesty.” Every single ‘s’ that passed through the doctor’s mouth was slurred, becoming a  ‘sh ’ instead as a spray of spittle flew all over the room. It was highly unhygienic,  Catra thought, but it was hardly her biggest issue as of right now.

“Is she going to be okay?”  Angella asked as her hands continued to run over Glimmer’s forehead and through her hair. 

“Absolutely.”

“Then why are her bandages red?”

The doctor paused as he slowly looked down to the bandages, his eyes widening behind the rims of his bottle-bottom glasses. His mouth slowly opened as his head began to cock, his mind no doubt racing for an answer, but  Angella spoke before he could come up with a good enough excuse.

“Change her bandages and check her again. If her bandages went red in the time it took to find me, she can’t be very stable.”  Angella began to stand up to let the doctor in to do his work, but Glimmer’s hand feebly rose and began to grasp at the hem of her sleeve, and she sat right back down again. She took  Glimmer’s hand in to her own and began to coo at her, murmuring and muttering soft reassurances.

Catra saw all of this out of the corner of her eye, and then the doctor was leaning over Glimmer, and she could see nothing. 

And then, like no time had passed at all, the doctor was straightening his back and assuring  Angella that everything was going to be ok. He had put a bundle of deep red bandages on the bedside table that sat and stunk, coiled like a snake, but nothing could quite overpower the disinfectant that was lathered on to every surface of the room.

How long had it been?

The doctor was shuffling away now, to a corner, to the door, to a chair –  Catra wasn’t sure where. Her eyes didn’t want to focus on anything, so she leant her head  against the headboard and closed them.

“What happened?”

Angella’s voice cut through the sound of Bow’s light snores, her soft yet insistent voice demanding an answer. Catra slowly cracked her eyes back open, but didn’t turn to look at her. Instead, she was fixated on the door.

“Adora,” she began, “is the She-Ra.”

Angella blinked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Glimmer told me about it. Adora grabbed the sword, and then she was the She-Ra. Hero of old, goddess of legend, a beacon in our darkest hour. You know, that She-Ra.”

“No,”  Angella said, slightly bewildered, “I know who the She-Ra is. Why is your Horde friend her, though? That’s not what’s meant to happen. That’s not what’s meant to happen at all!”

Catra turned her face towards  Angella , turning it to the point where she could just make  eye contact. “If I could shrug,” she said, “I would.”

“She was really big,” Glimmer mumbled helpfully.

“We were waiting for her. We were waiting for the She-Ra – she can’t be a Horde soldier. She’s meant to help us  _ defeat _ the Horde, not make the Horde stronger!” 

There was an uneasy silence that fell over the room at that statement.

“Well, we continue onward as we did before. We have the sword, so this Adora being the She-Ra changes nothing for the time being. Her escaping back to the Horde is a blow, I’ll admit, but it’s nothing we can’t recover from.”

Catra snorted as  Angella finished her impromptu speech. “You can thank Glimmer for that.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Glimmer was the one who decided to chase the sword instead of the prisoner.”

“But you told me to get the sword!” Glimmer said, her words mangled together in her drowsy state.  Angella frowned and moved, rearranging her place at the side of Glimmer’s bed to face  Catra more clearly.

“That was before she threw the sword. Come on, this is  basic battle tactics. If you had thought -”

“Glimmer,”  Angella said sharply, “was  _ concussed _ .”

Catra made a face as though to dismiss the argument as ludicrous. “We’ve all been concussed.”

“The sword was more important. I had to – I had to get the sword, it’s the Sword of Protection, I -” Glimmer said, stumbling and tripping over her own words as she did so.  Angella kept on  stroking her hair, and began to shush her reassuringly as she began to circle back around on herself.

Catra, however, was not as soft.

“You had to go and get the sword from what? The only enemy for miles  around  that was running in the opposite direction? From a passerby who’s going to end up being one of your loyal subjects? From the sword growing legs and running away? Come on, this is -”

“Catra.”

Angella’s voice cut across the room, and even the hubbub outside seemed to fall silent as everything ebbed for a moment.

“You’re being unreasonable.”

Catra leant back and closed her eyes.

“Am I?”

“Yes. Glimmer is not trained for such combat scenarios.”

“She’s a general,”  Catra pointed out.

“Yes, and she’s gone through the necessary training, just as any other general. She insisted on doing so. Her practical experience, however, is... lacking.”

“Because you wrap her in cotton wool.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I don’t particularly want my child dying in a battlefield. That isn’t unreasonable,” Angella said. She was clearly getting annoyed, and some of her royal posture was beginning to break down. It was hardly surprising, as it was weakened vastly in the presence of the concussed Glimmer in the first place.

“But, uh, it’s fine if she watches everyone else die? Is that it?”

“I’m here,” Glimmer muttered in to the air. “I’m here. I’m - I’m in the room.”

They both stopped talking, and instead listened to the scurrying footsteps of the world just outside their door.  Catra didn’t know how much time had passed before  Angella spoke – she had long since lost her ability to tell the passage of time. When had that happened?

“Glimmer is a backline commander, not a frontline one. That is how she was trained, and that is how she shall remain. I would appreciate it if you didn’t put her in danger.”

“And  who’s fault is that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, Catra's mean. If you wanna leave a comment, please feel free to. They're what keeps me motivated, and I was brought back to this fic to squeeze one more chapter out before finals by some extraordinarily nice comments. Keysmashes, favourite parts or pointing out typos are all welcome!
> 
>  
> 
> It's probably going to be a while until I see you all next (maybe a month or two), because I have finals coming up. I'm not really going to apologise for that - they're very important. However, I fully intend on coming back to this fic. With that in mind, I have a very important note to leave you all on: stay hydrated! I won't be around to remind you for a while!


	11. The Black Garnet Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is a weird chapter for two reasons. Reason one is a literary reason: I've absolutely yoinked the perspective from Catra. She's no longer the eyepiece, and I don't know how I feel about that, but I decided to experiment. That means you're getting Scorpia's (that's right, babey, it's scorpia time!) point of view, and any first person discourse will be from Scorpia's perspective.
> 
> Reason two is shadow weaver. A lot of her descriptions are... I don't know how to explain this, but they're strange and outputting. I felt like I should warn you somehow. It may make you uncomfortable.
> 
> As always, many thanks to Anna, who's been very busy this week but still found time to read what I wrote! She's @thankfullyimgay on Tumblr if you wanna check her out!
> 
> So, without any further adieu: it's scorpia time!

“Enter.”  

Scorpia tentatively entered the Black Garnet room. The titular Black Garnet was in the centre of the circular room, as powerful and omniscient as ever. It crackled with red static as Scorpia walked past it. Every time she came near the blood red crystal, the sheer nature of it always floored her. She could almost feel the power of the crystal thrum through her claws, and it was all she could do to not stare in awe.

It never became a part of the furniture.

“Shadow Weaver!” Scorpia began. She carried herself with an almost comedic amount of optimism, but a slight, undeniable edge of anxiety crept in to the waver of her voice. If Shadow Weaver were watching her, she would have seen her eyes dart around the room, and the shuffling of her feet, but as it was, she was hunched over a desk.

Well, Scorpia _assumed_ she was hunched over a desk. 

There was a mass of shadow gathered in the corner of the room, coiling and writhing as individual tentacles were formed before being hastily reabsorbed back in to the fold. Shadow Weaver’s form was obscured within the shadows, even upon closer inspection. Then again, Scorpia didn’t want to inspect closer.  

The closer you looked, the worse it got. If one looked at the shadows from ten paces away out of the corner of their eye, they were exactly that: shadows. But, if one looked closer, unsettling truths began to unearth themselves.  

The tentacles had personalities.  

Some squirmed under the crushing weight of large, fat tentacles that only ever moved to occasionally twitch. Others flailed, thrashing about until the tip of them cut through the fogs at the outer reaches of the bubble they were trapped in, almost gaining freedom in the form of three solid, individual inches before they were dragged back inside and redevoured.  

Scorpia could even swear that she saw figures inside the shadows that weren’t tentacles – if she didn’t know any better, she would say that she saw two spindly hands massaging and kneading the stiff flesh of Shadow Weavers’ shoulders, and the wispy beginnings of a head made of smoke hovering by her ear. The tongue, however, was far more pronounced than the head; the head was the outline of a skull, but the tongue was like that of a giraffe. It was long, thick and heavy, slithering around in the air as it wrapped itself in and around Shadow Weaver’s ear.

“Force Captain Scorpia.”  

Shadow Weaver’s voice cut through the shadows as she turned to face her. They seemed to fade in to nothingness as Shadow Weaver approached her, to the point where it was hard to tell if it had been real or simply a figment of Scorpia’s imagination.

“Reporting for duty!”

Scorpia flashed Shadow Weaver a shaky smile.  

“You will be changing your station to one directly under me.”

Scorpia’s smile wavered.   

“May I ask why?”  

Shadow Weaver continued to glide towards Scorpia. Soon, it would get to the point where Scorpia would have to decide whether she should hold her ground or begin stepping back, and she was anticipating that decision as Shadow Weaver persistently slinked closer and closer towards her.  

“I am in need of your... expertise. One of my newly assigned Force Captains, Adora, has -”  

And then she stopped talking.  

Shadow Weaver froze in place, mid-step, and Scorpia could hear her breathing getting louder. She turned a sharp right and walked directly towards the desks and almost seemed to fall on them, her back hunched as her hands leant on the smooth, cold metal. Her breathing was even more laboured now, and she seemed to be arching her head this way and that, almost as though she were trying to escape from some imagined pain that continually floated and rested at the uppermost part of her head. 

“Are you alright?” Scorpia asked against her better judgement as her protective instincts began to kick in. She managed to take an entire step forward before she was answered:  

“Speak,” Shadow Weaver replied through gritted teeth, “when spoken to.”  

Scorpia immediately took a step back, returning to her original position. Shadow Weaver hadn’t even looked her way to acknowledge her offer, but the sentiment was clear enough. Scorpia was to wait this out, just as Shadow Weaver was. The shadows that had dissipated began to slowly creep back and expand, except this time Scorpia decided to look away rather than deal with the knowledge of what might have been inside them.  

Except it wasn’t that easy.  

The knowledge that something, anything, might have been going on just five feet away from her made Scorpia’s eyes wander. They refused to stay stuck to the military laces of her shoes, and instead began to look towards Shadow Weaver, who was looking progressively worse.  

Scorpia could see beads of sweat budding up on the back of Shadow Weaver’s hands, and, with a sense of lethargy that seemed to be an act of pure spite towards the rest of the scenario, they began to slowly roll down her hands and drip on to the table. The hands in question suddenly clenched and attempted to close and, despite the metal table underneath the pads of her finger tips, they did.   

There was an ear-wrenching sound as metal tore and the very atoms of the table were dragged against one another. Despite her best attempts, Scorpia couldn’t suppress a wince, but Shadow Weaver either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Scorpia could have sworn she also heard the sound of bones cracking as Shadow Weaver's back arched like a cat, but by the time her eyes flicked to where a tentacle may have been snapped viciously in half, it had disappeared; the surge of scarlet static electricity that pulsed through the air had made her wince and take a step back, and in that moment she missed whatever she thought she may have seen. It couldn't have been anything more than a half baked delusion born out of a very intense fear. 

Right? 

The static dissipated, and the shadows reclined. Shadow Weaver’s breathing began to sound less and less like she had just run a marathon with a forty kilogram weight strapped to her back. 

Shadow Weaver stood up, straightened her back, and lifted her right hand up to just below eye level. 

Scorpia could easily see how sharp they were.  

The relaxation that Shadow Weaver possessed while plucking out strips of metal from under her fingernails was outstanding to Scorpia. Not ten seconds ago, she had been paralysed by some unknown force, and she was already back in control as though nothing had ever happened, exuding a presence of undeniable authority.  

“One of my Force Captains has been hexed. Her memories have been altered, and the enemy are playing mind games and using manipulation tactics that I used to believe was beneath them.” Shadow Weaver talked with the ease and fluidity of a honeyed tongue as she advanced upon Scorpia. They were now toe-to-toe, and she showed no sign of stopping.

“She’s not in the right state of mind. I am assigning you to become her keeper, her subordinate, and her advisor. It falls upon you to show her the way and ensure that any revolutionary thoughts forced upon her by the rebellion’s magics do not manifest.”  

Scorpia had now taken so many steps back that she was now outside of the Red Garnet room, albeit only barely; her front foot was resting on top of the groove in the floor which the heavy, automatic doors slid on. Shadow Weaver had leant down, and there were mere inches between their faces as she said her next words. It was times like these that Scorpia found that she wished Shadow Weaver didn’t insist on wearing a mask at all times – the lack of personality unnerved her.  

“Do not disappoint me.”  

With that, Shadow Weaver straightened up and began to walk back to the desk she had came from. 

“Um,” Scorpia began, trying to speak over the lump in her throat, “where are Adora’s quarters?”  

But the automatic door had shut by the time she had finished her question.  

“Well,” she muttered out loud to herself, “looks like it’s up to Scorpia to save the day again, huh?”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was something, huh? I'd love to hear your comments below. For instance, what did you think of Shadow Weaver? Anything's appreciated though, even keysmashes :p. Comments are what keep me going, because behind all of this, I'm secretly a dragon that hoards validation.
> 
> I know I said it would be a while last time, but this time it really will be, so I'll see you all on the other side. In the meantime, stay hydrated!


	12. The KonMarie Method

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bow organises some clothes. Glimmer heals from her wounds. Catra talks back.
> 
> As always, thanks to my beta, Anna. Her tumblr is @thankfullyimgay, and she picked up a ton of typos. I was also uncertain about Angella in this chapter, so I asked about and @sapphiclabvibes (tumblr & AO3) and @rushvalleys (Twitter & AO3) offered to beta read this as well! The former helped with grammar, and the latter did some really in-depth analysis which helped me shift about a few parts of the story to make... well, you'll see when you read it.
> 
>  
> 
> So, without any further adieu: a chapter!

“Where does this one go?” 

Bow held up a dark blue cape for a moment before beginning to fold it up. Glimmer, who had been lying in bed facing the opposite direction, turned over and peeked her face over the edge of her hanging bed to look down at the offending article of clothing. 

“Top-left drawer,” she said, her words coming out mangled due to her face being smushed up against the numerous pillows lying on her bed. 

Catra was sitting on the floor, her back against the soft, velvety foot of the sofa that curled in to the window behind it. One might point out that, seeing as there were only three of them, Catra should have been sitting on the sofa, and that there is no logical explanation for Catra choosing to sit on the floor. 

One would be correct. 

She was currently buried in a pile of clothing that had reached her mid-torso. Despite diligently sorting through the pile, it seemed to grow in size instead of shrink, which Catra thought was hugely impolite. 

Her, Bow and Glimmer were currently in the process of cleaning her room. They had created a rather efficient system of affairs: Catra, who was Queen of the Laundry Pile, was sitting in laundry, and would periodically throw an item of clothing at Bow. She had decided that she scored extra points if she caught Bow off-guard, or otherwise knocked him over; both Bow and Glimmer repeatedly told her this was not the case, so Catra had decided to secretly believe this instead and continue to aggressively pelt underwear at Bow. 

Bow would then hold up the clothing as an offering to Glimmer, who was lounging in her hanging bed. Her excuse, naturally, was that she had only just been released from hospital after spending a week there, and couldn’t possibly have any energy to spend on chores. Instead, she would simply look at the clothing and tell Bow where to put it, which he promptly did. 

They had been doing this for an hour, and the room hadn’t gotten any cleaner. 

“You never told me why _we’re_ cleaning _your_ room,” Catra said as she continued to bombard Bow with socks. “Kinda feels like something you could do by yourself.” 

Glimmer tossed and turned and shimmied until her eyes and forehead were hanging over the edge of the bed so that she could look at Catra. She did try to say something, but her mouth was firmly in the mattress, so it came out as an entirely unintelligible. 

“What’s that?” Catra said, sitting forward and cupping her ear as she pretended to listen to Glimmer as she spoke lazily in to the bed. “I'm gorgeous, and you love my company and the best excuse you could come up with to spend time with me was to ask me to clean your bloody room?” 

Catra leant back and began tutting. “Sheesh, you could have at least -” 

“Hey!” Bow shouted, “I’m here too!” 

He was currently perched on top of a stool that was placed precariously on top of a chair, balancing on it with one foot as he placed a pair of socks away. He turned his head to shout at Catra but, as he did so, a bright pink leotard hit him square in the face. He teetered backwards, arms waving in the air, before falling and miraculously managing to land on the stool. 

“Quiet, third wheel!” 

Catra flung a barrage of shoes at Bow, cackling as she did so. Bow hopped off of the stool and crouched behind the chair for cover, yelling as he did so. 

“If anyone’s the third wheel here,” he wailed as he deflected a show with his right hand, chucking it to the side, “it’s you!” 

Catra went to throw another shoe, but there weren’t any more to throw – they had all found their way to the other side of the room. She began to pick out another type of ammunition to use, but she was promptly cut off by Glimmer, who had pushed herself up and was now sitting, rather than lying, on her bed so she could look at the both of them. 

“Hey!” 

Both Catra and Bow froze and looked up at Glimmer. 

“Knock it off!” 

Catra slowly drew her arm back in to a throwing position, tightening her fist around the skirt in her hand. 

“Catra,” Glimmer said. Her voice was cold as she employed a stern tone, an almost unspoken warning creeping out as she glared at her. Catra hadn’t broken eye contact, but her hand hadn’t stopped inching backwards. 

Lazily, Catra threw the skirt at Bow. 

It arced gracefully through the air, doing not one but two somersaults as the crushed fabric spread open. It began to spin at the crest of its arc, and by the time it hit Bow, it was fully open like a bola. It wrapped around his face like a face-hugger, the sides of the skirt fully tangled together at the back of his head. He couldn’t see a thing and, despite imitating a windmill thoroughly with his arms, he fell backwards off of the chair and landed on the floor. 

“Catra!” They both shouted, and she hunched over in a fit of laughter. Suddenly, a giggle tore out of Glimmer as her stoic façade broke, and Bow slowly began to chuckle as well. Before they knew it, the three of them were wiping tears away from their eyes as they lounged about in Glimmer’s room, which was now messier than when they had begun cleaning. 

“Man, you should really clean more often,” Catra said as she tried to disentangle herself from the pile of clothes that shackled her to the floor. 

“Yeah, she should,” Bow agreed, shooting a playful glare up at Glimmer. “She only cleans it whenever she goes on missions.” 

“There’s a mission coming up?” 

“It’s an expedition to the Mystacor,” Glimmer said. “We have word that the Horde are going to try and do something sneaky up there, and I for one could use a soak in those hot baths while we wait for them to strike. What do you say?” 

Catra scoffed. 

“There’s more to being a commander than spa days and waiting for the enemy to come to you,” she said, “but if it gets you to clean your room, then I’m sure your mother won’t complain.” 

Bow let out a laugh at that, and he was rewarded with an icy glare from Glimmer. 

“Why do you only clean your room before missions, anyway?” 

“Well,” Bow replied, “she’s too lazy to do it any other time.” 

Catra began to laugh, but she was promptly interrupted by Glimmer. 

“It, uh, it was this ritual me and Bow began when we were younger. It was my first expedition as a commander, and Bow was coming with me.” As she spoke, Bow’s smile faded and he began to focus more on folding the clothes in front of him. 

“We were actually replacing this other commander. His name was Solare, and he had been really good, but he’d been killed on the battlefield, so his stuff had to be collected from his room. Me and Bow, for whatever reason, were a part of the process, and when we got there, Mum said ‘Gosh, Glimmer! This room is almost as messy as yours!’” 

Glimmer let out a dry, strained chuckle. 

“It took ages to clean and sort through, so before I left, me and Bow cleaned my room so that, if Mum had to collect my things, it would be a lot easier for her. And it stuck, I guess.” 

An awkward silence fell on the room. 

“It’s an odd habit, but it gets her to clean!” Bow said. It was clearly an attempt at humour, but it did little to lighten the mood. Still, Catra tried to put on a smile, but she could almost taste how fake it looked. 

“So, when are we leaving for this trip?” 

“In a weeks’ time,” Glimmer said, “but we technically have to ask Mum for approval first. 

“Approval?” Catra asked. 

“Yup.” Glimmer teleported from her bed to the sofa that Catra was slumped against, but remained lying down; she had an appearance to maintain, after all. “I mean, she’s going to greenlight it, like she always does, but it’s a formality we have to go through. There’s usually a big ceremony with lots of guards and nobles and she gives me the quest, and I humbly accept it, and then we go and kick the Horde’s butts.” 

“Even though you’re still on the mend?” 

“I won’t be in a weeks time!” 

Catra bent her head backwards so that it was lying on the sofa, and turned her head to look at Glimmer in the eyes. 

“You’re sure?” 

“She’s definitely going to let us go to Mystacor.” 

\--- 

“You’re not going to Mystacor.” 

Angella’s verdict echoed around the conspicuously empty throne room. The windows, large by design to give the hall a large and powerful feeling, now made Glimmer feel smaller than she already was. 

“But -” Glimmer began to say, but she was immediately cut off. 

“No buts,” Angella said. 

She was sitting on her throne in a less than regal position. Her ceremonial robes were on in a slightly slanted manner, ruffling the fabric in the wrong places. It looked as though it were falling off of her shoulder as she sat forward, hand on one knee. Her other hand was rubbing against her nose, and the light caught on her simple, golden wedding ring. 

She looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. 

Glimmer took a step forward, hands already in the air to protest, and then something Catra couldn’t have possibly predicted happened: the two guards that were standing at either side of Angella’s throne stepped forward. 

They were kitted out in regular guard uniform, Catra noticed, neither wearing any badge to indicate they were even particularly skilled soldiers. Their purple boots clattered against the cold tiles as they both took a single, uniform step forward with their outside foot, lowering the pikes they were holding as though they were expecting an oncoming cavalry charge. 

Catra frowned. 

Glimmer had frozen, naturally, her face beginning to shift from one of confusion to one of anger, her mind no doubt slowly slipping in to a fury, but Catra couldn’t stop analysing the situation for the life of her. 

Simply put, it was _odd_ _._  

There were only two guards in the room. Every other time Catra had been in here, there had been far more guards, and even more gentry who only existed to mill about. It was only cleared out during official and private business, and even then, the guard would stay – which brought Catra to the subject of the guard. 

Why the hell were they wielding pikes? 

Pikes were battlefield weapons. They were for when you wanted to keep your enemy five feet in front of you, please and thank you. They were for when you had a whole line of, quite frankly, untrained cannon fodder who were only there to buy time. 

It was easy to flank a pike. It was easy to outmanoeuvre a pike. Pikes were weapons for outside combat, and yet here they were, two goons with pikes. 

Which led to yet another interesting point: they really weren’t that well trained. Their hands were already beginning to shake from the stress of holding the pikes horizontally, which wasn’t unheard of in untrained soldiers, but these men were supposed to be guarding the queen herself. 

“Why,” Glimmer said, “are your guards pointing their weapons at me?” 

Glimmer’s words were slow, like treacle moving uphill, if the treacle were filled with a hive of red fire ants that were slowly getting more and more worked up. 

“The soldiers are hired to defend my throne.” 

“I’m your daughter,” Glimmer replied. Catra could tell from where she was stood that her teeth were gritted, and she was barely containing herself. Bow, on the other hand, looked incredibly awkward. His eyes kept on flitting around until they met Catra’s at which point he froze and tried to express _something_ through a contorted face movement, but Catra couldn’t tell what. 

“You’re a soldier, aren’t you?” 

Both Catra and Bow froze, breaking their impromptu game of charades as they turned to face Angella. Angella still had two fingers fiercely pinching the bridge of her nose, but her eyes slowly slid upwards to lock with Glimmer’s. They looked cold, calculating, and tired. 

They were the scariest thing that Catra had seen since she left the Horde. 

“I - What?” Glimmer said, spluttering as she began to laugh breathlessly despite herself, not knowing entirely how to react. 

“You’re a soldier.” 

It was a statement, not a question. 

“Yes, but -” 

“Then fight.” 

Silence smothered the room. 

Glimmer took a half-step back and looked at her mother in shock, her mouth agape in shock. She moved it, as though to speak, but nothing but a hasty wind fell forth from her. She was grasping at straws, desperately trying to figure out what she was expected to do, when Catra had a small epiphany. 

This, she realised, was a test. A test, she might add, that Glimmer was failing heartily. 

“Why?” Glimmer asked, finally finding her words. 

Angella sat up, taking her time to straighten her back fully as she faced down Glimmer. 

“You expect me to let you back in to the field in that condition?” 

“I’ll be fine in a week, the doctor said so,” Glimmer said, her hands flying as she spoke. “You’re being – you're unreasonable!” 

“I’m sorry, Glimmer, but how am I being unreasonable?” Angella asked. 

Glimmer stared at her, dumbfounded. 

“I’ve done this plenty of times before, Mum! I’m a commander! A – a general! I – I shouldn’t be babied like this!” Glimmer said, ending in a yell that left the whole room in an uneasy hush. 

“You shouldn’t be mollycoddled?” Angella asked. After Glimmer’s tirade, it almost felt like a whisper, but she had kept her voice at a regal volume with a regular tempo, as though she were talking to any other noble that wasn’t her daughter. 

“No. Actually – you don’t treat _Bow_ like this! Hell, -” 

“Language.” 

“ _Hell_ , you don’t even treat Catra like this!” 

Catra turned towards Glimmer with an incredulous look. 

“Even?” Catra said. “Thanks a bunch, Sparkles.” 

“Bow,” Angella said, stopping whatever bickering that was about to begin before it had a chance to escalate, “is the best archer anyone in the rebellion has ever seen. Catra has proven herself a capable combatant. What have you done?” 

Glimmer’s face began to scrunch up. Catra wanted to say she wasn’t familiar with the sensation, but all she could do was hope that there was a bathroom nearby. 

“I - I’ve gone through the combat training just like any other officer! I’ve done the tests! I - I have experience in the field! I -” 

“And what do you have to show for it?” 

Angella stood up as she shouted, the words crashing in to them like a wave. Glimmer took a step backwards, and her breathing began to get even more irregular. 

“You cannot expect me to let you go out in to the field this soon after an injury like that, Glimmer! It is unfair for you to put yourself in these life-threatening situations and for you to expect me to just sit here and let you do that. I don’t want to be sitting in bed while worrying whether you’re being skewered by some Horde grunt. I don’t want you to bleed out on the side of the road like carrion, Glimmer, and every time you go out in to the field and you can’t defend yourself, you’re risking my entire family.” Angella stepped down from her throne, and took three slow steps forward. As she did so, her right hand raised a half-centimetre, almost as though to stroke Glimmer’s face, but it stopped mere centimetres away from her cheek and hung there ineffectually before falling back down to her side. 

“Do you understand that, Glimmer?” 

Glimmer, Catra noticed, was edging closer and closer to tears. 

“How - Don’t stand there and act as though I haven’t done anything!” Glimmer shouted back, taking her own step forward and pointing violently at the floor. “I found Catra! I helped get the Sword of Protection to Brightmoon – the only – the best thing that’s happened to the Rebellion in – since Dad died!” 

Bow coughed, but he was clearly hiding some form of surprise at the audacity of Glimmer to even consider bringing up Micah, let alone actually bringing him up. 

“I’m sorry, was it you who brought back the sword, or was it Catra? I remember you telling me that you almost died while getting the sword, if it weren’t for Catra, and you almost died again at Thaymor if it weren’t for Catra, _again._ You have this habit of twisting the dumbest of luck in to some story that makes it sound like you’ve achieved something, Glimmer.” 

“Mum - I - I’m not alone on the field! I can rely on my friends, you’re acting as though I’m this - this lone wolf who could be stabbed at any moment! That’s not the case, I - I -”

“You what, Glimmer? What are you going to say, that Catra and Bow here will cover for your ineptitude? That they’ll take the fall? Will they also take the blade that slices through your ribs, Glimmer? What you’re asking for is unfair.” 

“Mum -” 

“Go to your room.” 

Angella sounded defeated as she turned around sharply. She took her time in walking back up to the throne, giving her daughter plenty of opportunities to leave, but all Glimmer could do was stand and try not to weep. Eventually, she too turned around, defeated, with her back hunched as she bit on her lip and tried not to weep. 

Catra saw the beginnings of a sob rake through her body, and it almost clawed its way out of Glimmer’s mouth, too, but she jammed the back of her wrist in to her mouth to stop it from escaping. 

It was painful to watch, even for Catra. 

The two were dragging their feet along the floor as they walked away from one another, back to back, split by a slice of darkness as they both basked in the harsh sunlight. 

“Your highness,” Catra said. 

Both Glimmer and Angella paused. The former froze entirely, but Angella turned her head at an angle, so that the corner of her left eye could just about see Catra in her peripheral vision. 

“You’re being unnecessarily cruel.” 

Catra didn’t know why she was saying this. She didn’t know why she took a step forward when she did, or why it hurt her so to see Glimmer dragged down to tears. If she were a sentimentalist, she might have said that it was because she herself had been in a similar position to Glimmer many times. She would have claimed that she, too, had a mother figure who put her down. She, too, was never enough because her own mother figure had a favourite child who was not her. 

But she wasn’t a sentimentalist, so she put it down to some ill-defined need to rebel instead. 

“Glimmer,” Catra said, continuing when Angella maintained the frosty silence between them, “has potential.” 

No one dared breathe. 

“Her ability to teleport is an unrivalled one.” 

Of course it was unrivalled! Who else did Catra know that could teleport? Had she even considered it as a serious possibility before their chance encounter? Catra kicked herself mentally before continuing to stumble through her argument. 

“It is incredibly useful and, with the correct training, she could excel on the battlefield. That training comes from hand-to-hand combat, and martial arts.” She took a breath before continuing, steadying her nerves. 

“It does _not_ come from some sub-par, generalised course that you give to every poor soldier under your command as a small token of pity.” 

Angella turned around to face her completely now, her face one carved entirely of stone. Her eyes, however -  

Catra decided not to try and decide how she felt by looking at the pain in her eyes. Eyes were so easy to misread, after all. 

“And what exactly makes you think that my training regimen is so flawed?” 

“Well, for starters, you taught sparkles over here how to use a pike.” 

“And how,” Angella asked, “is that a flaw?” 

“Ok, a basic appreciation of weaponry isn’t a flaw, per se, but look at her! She teleports! This is a person you want to be teaching to get in close, in a way that no-one else can, and to utilise unique combat abilities that no one else has access to. Instead, you gave her a standard issue pike and told her to stand five feet away from the enemy while she jabs at ‘em over and over again.” 

She paused as she gasped for air, her words tumbling out of her mouth on their own volition, crawling free in to the world whether she liked it or not. 

“Your training regimen put her at the disadvantage. Everything she’s learnt that’s actually been useful has been her own damn legwork, and that’s on you.” 

Angella took several measured paces, closing the gap between her and Catra as her heels clicked on the hard floor. 

“Her own legwork clearly isn’t enough.” 

Catra didn’t back down as Angella advanced, holding her own as they came nose to nose. She stared her in the eye, as Angella glared directly back at her, creating an undeclared staring contest that neither wanted to be the loser of. 

Wait. 

Catra stopped and blinked. 

This wasn’t antagonistic. Glare was an... unfair word to use. Angella’s wasn’t glaring, because she was hardly angry. She seemed sad, disappointed, like someone had just kicked her while she was down - 

But she didn’t have time to get caught up in all of that. 

“Well, train her better then!” 

Angella sighed, and closed her eyes and stood, silent, almost contemplative, as Catra was left awkwardly close to her. She turned on her heel and walked back up to the throne, taking her seat as she turned to face the three of them. Glimmer was still facing away from her – Catra had no doubts that she had scores of tears running down her face by this point. 

“Very well.” 

Glimmer’s back straightened, Catra froze, and Bow finally looked up from his boots to face Angella. 

“If you believe that Glimmer would benefit from a training regime tailored to her style and needs, then I’m sure that there is no person in the castle more qualified than you to provide that.” 

That wasn’t what Catra had meant. 

“As such, you will train Glimmer to bring out this potential you speak of. After all, you can see it so clearly, I doubt anyone could possibly fulfil this role but you.” 

That wasn’t what Catra had meant at all. 

“Glimmer will be approved to return to the field once she beats you in a hand to hand fight, with no weapons. You said yourself that she should excel at martial arts.” 

Angella smiled at Catra. It was a heavy smile, like one would see at a loved one’s funeral: heavy, deep and sincere. 

“I look forward to seeing the results of your efforts.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks!
> 
> I'm more than welcoming of comments - your feeback means the world to me. Even if it's a keysmash or just a "nice!", I do appreciate it. By the same token, I feel it's worth mentioning that if you've commented a few times before, I almost definitely recoginse your url by now!!! So thank y'all!!!
> 
> To anticipate a few comments, though: Angella may seem OOC. I know that, and I recognise this, but this was the closest I could get between "canon" Angella and what I wanted to happen. I threaded the needle, and this is what we got!
> 
> I'm also still doing exams, so updates will remain spotty. Just remember to stay hydrated, and I'm sure we'll all be fine.
> 
> So, until next time - Adios!


	13. Training

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I hear a Wahoo?

“Punch me.”

It was a fairly simple request, all things considered. In fact, it wasn’t even that peculiar a request. It was the first day of her training  regiment with  Catra , so this was par for the course.

They were currently standing five feet away from each other in a field. It was almost out in the sticks, but not quite, as  Catra   had spent the week scoping out fields as though she were hunting for houses, and had decided on the perfect one. It was right at the midpoint between  Brightmoon Castle and the Whispering Woods, the floor was dry but not tough, and it was excessively large.

Punch you?”

Catra held back a sigh. “Listen, Sparkles, we’re going to waste a lot of time here if you repeat everything I say. Now punch me.”

“But… why?” Glimmer was standing awkwardly, her fists half raised, and kept on looking between  Catra , who was in front of her, and Bow, who was sitting on the side of the field with a large foam mitt. It was the kind one might see at baseball games, with a pointing finger and the words “#1 princess” scrawled on the front. Unfortunately, due to a manufacturing error when Bow had been making it, it was the middle finger instead of the index finger that was pointing upwards. He didn’t have enough time to rectify this, so he instead moved the positions of the fingers by drawing more on with permanent marker.

The effect didn’t quite work, but both Glimmer and  Catra enjoyed the sentiment for very different reasons.

“I’m teaching you how to fight, so we’re going to fight. This isn’t difficult!”

“I just -”

Glimmer got halfway through whatever she was about to say before  Catra stepped forward and began to punch her. It was a sloppy punch, all things considered. It was a right hook, wide and slow, and gave Glimmer plenty of time to teleport a foot back and out of the way of the swing, but it got things moving.

“Hey!”

“You could have just stepped back,”  Catra said before pushing forward. She took a step with her left foot and followed up with a left jab. Glimmer simply teleported a foot to the left. “If you keep teleporting, you’ll run out of juice too quickly.”

Somewhere to their right, they heard the distant shouts of Bow, who was vaguely backing up what  Catra was saying.

“Yeah, well -”

Glimmer got halfway through what she was saying before she was made to hop back by another jab from  Catra . It went like this for maybe five minutes.  Catra would jab, test, and push forward, and Glimmer would backpedal, teleport and duck.  For five continuous minutes, Glimmer did nothing but defend, managing to throw an impressive total of zero punches during the assault.

\---

Training was meant to clear  Adora’s mind. It was meant to give her something to focus on. It was meant to sharpen her thoughts in to deadly spears with which she would pierce her enemies.

Instead, it just isolated her and trapped her with her thoughts.

It was too easy. Training in the Fright Zone was a gruelling process, but not for the reasons one might expect. There are far more cadets at the lower levels and lower ranks, as graduating to the next rank is anything but expected. This creates a pyramid structure, where there are many  eleven year old wannabes, and maybe seven cadets who made it through six years of training and have a realistic shot at becoming force captain.

Most of these young ones, who many simply called “grunts” or “squaddies”, had next to no practical combat experience. They had been taught in classrooms and dojos, but hadn’t been released in to a warzone, and for good reason.

For them, the cadets were their first true enemies.

A cadet (in this instance, Adora), would stand in a perfectly circular ring, and one by one, the squaddies would be released towards her. Their goal was to defeat her, and her goal was to defeat them. It was an impossible goal, naturally - she was seven years older, seven years wiser and seven years stronger, but it taught them how to fight better combatants and how to take a hit.

When all of the  eleven year olds were beaten, the twelve year olds would be released, and then thirteen year olds, until  Adora was fighting the year below her, which posed a real threat, especially because she would be worn down by then.

However, as it stood, she was currently punting children the size of toddlers like rugby balls halfway across the ring. It was easy, and it didn’t distract her from her thoughts:

Catra.

The Sword of Protection.

That… thing she turned in to.

Sometimes she felt guilty. After all, she had just picked up a child and thrown him, rather violently, halfway across the room. She should have felt guilty. But she felt a twinge of guilt at the lack of guilt, no matter how paradoxical that may seem.

She couldn’t afford to feel guilty, though. It was the way things were, so she gritted her teeth and got on with it. It was how she was  trained, it was how  Scorpia was trained, and it was how -

She punched the next child.

\---

It was day two of  training .

They were out in the same field, again, except this time the sky was trying to rain. Every now and again, they would feel a droplet of rain spit against their noses, but it wasn’t enough for either one of them to say anything about it. It was enough, however, for Bow to go to great lengths to cover his popcorn. It had to be kept dry and crisp, and he kept on saying to the both of them that there wasn’t anything worse than soggy popcorn.

Glimmer, who had recently had her nose broken, decided to stay quiet and politely agree.

“Punch me.”

This time, Glimmer did.

Catra was hardly surprised. Glimmer had become quite feisty towards the end of yesterday’s training session, even going so far as to throw a few punches of her own. None of them landed effectively;  Catra had fought squaddies which posed more of a threat than her.

Catra took a step forward as Glimmer rushed forward, planting her left heel firmly in to the ground. Glimmer, rather predictably, teleported behind her, and  Catra caught her mid-air with a kick to the stomach. She fell like a stone, skittering along the mud as though she were skimming across a pond.

She picked herself back up and rushed towards her.

Catra had taught her yesterday that you couldn’t leave yourself on the ground in a fight, and she had clearly remembered. Seeing as an attack from the back had failed, she would be attacking from the front, and attack from the front she did.

She threw a right hook, which  Catra caught in her hand. With a simple twist,  Catra was pulling Glimmer over her body in a flip.

Glimmer teleported and materialised five feet to her right, her hands clasping her knees as she panted. It would seem that  Catra had her work cut out for her.

“You’re predictable.”

Glimmer gritted her teeth and stood back up, straightening her back as she prepared to hurl an insult back, but  Catra had already pushed the advantage and was kicking at her. Glimmer hopped forwards before stepping in herself, throwing another right hook.

Catra  tried to tamp down her frustration.

This kid wasn’t getting it. Battlefield awareness was half of combat, and predicting your enemies was half of  battlefield awareness. If the enemy, if the  _ Horde _ , knew what Glimmer was going to do, they’d beat her. And then kill her.

She’d be turned in to mincemeat before she had the chance to strike a blow.

Catra grabbed Glimmer’s punch. She was mentally preparing to scold her as she turned to flip her a second time, and then -

Catra was falling.

She turned, quick, and managed to roll out of the fall. It wasn’t great, and her shoulder still hurt, but it was far better than spraining her wrist or bruising her ribs. She sprung back to her feet to see Glimmer standing unscratched.

She must have teleported them both up there, and then herself back.

It must have been ten meters, by  Catra’s calculation, and that was a sizeable fall when you were caught by surprise. Glimmer looked proud, and  Catra’s frustration began to fizzle away.

“Not bad,” she said as she stood up and wiped the mud off of her arm, “but can you keep that up? You got enough fuel in the tank to beat me like that?”

“I’ve got enough fuel in the tank to turn you to dust!” Glimmer shouted back. She was regaining her colour slowly as she began to return to her cockier self.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!” She was grinning now at the thrill of having genuinely hurting  Catra . “I’ll beat you so hard that you’ll forget how to fight!”

Catra grinned back at her, and rearranged her feet in to a proper fighting stance.

“Less bark, more bite!”

\---

“Your turn.”

Adora, who was lying on the floor, clumsily slapped the dice down on the chest of drawers at the end of the bed.  Scorpia , who was lying on the bed facing said chest of drawers, picked it up and threw the dice.  Unfortunately, it skittered slightly too far and past the board of Snakes and Ladders, and down on to the floor. Luckily, it landed right on Adora’s chest.

“That’s a… five!” Adora declared happily. She plucked the dice from where it lay and began playing with it, running it past her knuckles and through her fingers.

“Do you ever… ok, here’s my question. Do you ever - damn it! A ladder!”  Scorpia had moved her piece four spaces forward, and upon coming to the top of a ladder, slid her piece down two rows.

“Right. Question. Do you ever feel… hollow? Like you’re missing something? Like there’s more to life than going to training drills and killing princesses and being an exemplary Force Captain?”

Adora threw the dice in to the air and caught it in her mouth.

Cadets were not allowed to possess, sell, or consume alcohol, regardless of age. One could be 18, and still unable to drink alcohol due to their status as a Cadet. Force Captains, however,  _ were _ allowed to drink alcohol. In fact, alcohol was included in their weekly rations. They were free to choose from beer, gin, or rum. Adora had chosen beer on  Scorpia’s recommendation - gin, apparently, smelt and tasted like the substance  Scorpia used to polish her claws, and rum gave her a dreadful hangover.

So, for the last few weeks, they had been hoarding beer, and now they were five pints in and feeling the effect rather heavily. Or was it six?

“Yeah!” Adora agreed, forcing the word out and around the dice that she had wrapped her tongue around. There was a little too much spittle to be comfortable, but both of them were too far gone to care.

There were more words forming at the back of her throat, but her mind couldn’t form them. Instead, they danced in the peripherals of her brain. They were shadows that danced away at the first sign of light, sand that kept on slipping through her fingers and water that fled as soon as her fingertips came within a hair’s breadth of touching them.

She fished the dice out of her mouth and rolled on the drawers. It left a thin trail of slime as it slowly came to a stop - a whopping three.

“Your question,”  Scorpia reminded her.

“I’m delaying and stalling,” Adora hummed as she moved her figure forward by three spaces, “because I haven’t thought of a question yet.”

“You can’t think of anything?”  Scorpia asked as she rolled over. Her back was now facing the bed, stomach-up, and she crooked her neck at an awkward angle so she could see Adora’s face, albeit upside-down.

“It’s unfair! You’re better at this game than me!”

Adora handed over the dice to  Scorpia , but  Scorpia gently redirected Adora’s hand to the dresser again, choosing to putt the dice in a random direction with her claws as though they were playing a game of golf.

“Two! Come on, I can’t go until you ask me something!”

“Alright, ok, I’ve got it.” Adora slowly and painfully began to sit up, her arms flailing as she tried to balance herself unsuccessfully.

“You’ve got a question?”

“I’ve got a question.”

“Ok,”  Scorpia said, “hit me with it. Hit me!”

“Can you do a handstand?” Adora had now successfully pulled herself up, and she was clinging to the drawers for dear life as her body slowly began to slump downwards.  Scorpia just looked at her with a mix of confusion and amusement, making eye contact with her steadily declining eyes.

“Why would I -”

“Your claws!” Adora blurted out. “That’s  gotta make balancing tough.”

Scorpia murmured a few words of agreement, the words undecipherable but the tone unmistakable. She rolled over again, and then placed her claws underneath her as though she were going to do a push-up. Then, slowly, she began to raise herself in to a handstand.

And then she fell backwards.

“You’ve got to do it quickly!” Adora added. She was trying to be helpful, but she was shouting despite the fact that  Scorpia’s ear was less than a foot from her mouth.  Scorpia took the advice, though, and began again, this time much quicker, but she overshot and fell forwards.

She collapsed, landing firmly on Adora.

\---

The hot springs in  Mystacor were said to be the best in the land. Hot, revitalising and full of some unspecified form of magic, it was claimed that they accelerated healing and allowed the stress to melt away from one’s body through their pores. Whether this was strictly true or not is largely irrelevant, for they are revered, effective, and truly spectacular. 

However, Glimmer wasn’t at  Mystacor , so she had to deal with the hot baths at  Brightmoon . 

Her dissatisfaction at this was made known to anyone and everyone who would hear her out, which was everyone, because she was a princess and they were therefore legally obligated to listen to her woes. The one person who was not forced to hear her out, Bow, did so anyway because he was a kind friend and a bit of a pushover. 

“That looks nasty,” Bow said, pointing to Glimmer’s finger. It was bandaged up and attached to a splint, which in turn was attached to the next finger over. Her fourth finger was broken.

“Yeah,  Catra broke it. Bent it backwards too quickly,” Glimmer complained as she lowered herself in to the hot tub. It was a painful process, because every inch of her body was covered in a bruise of some sort.

Bow was already in the tub. He had been waiting here for some time, as he had headed straight for the tub while Glimmer went to the nurse. Originally, back at the  beginning of training, Bow would accompany her to every trip to the nurse, but the frequency with which she went to the nurse was embarrassing, so he now only went with her for moral support if she asked him to. Instead, he waited in the baths for her.

She enjoyed the heat because it relaxed her muscles, which were inevitably tense after training. Bow liked them because they were decadent.

“Well, to be fair, you shouldn’t have unfurled your fist.”

Neither of them expected  Catra to step out of the changing rooms and in to the room. She was wearing similar bathing suits to them, but for the first time Glimmer noticed how she, too, had bruises. Unlike herself, though, they were merely peppered here and there rather than coating her entire body like a thick paint.

She elegantly came to the side of the bath and hopped in, barely making a splash. She tensed, though, and bristled, and looked more stressed as she came in to the bath than she did beforehand. The destressing effects of the hot tub, therefore, didn’t seem to work on  Catra at all.

“At least you get tomorrow off!” Bow said, splashing water at Glimmer. It was only a few droplets, but she whipped her hand back and shrieked.

“Bow! I’ve got to keep my hand dry!”

“Besides, we’re doing theory tomorrow,”  Catra said. “Feel free to join if you want.”

“God,” Glimmer moaned, “please don’t test me on the sword types. Nobody cares about the sword types! Just stab them! That’s sword theory 101!”

“You’re on break, Glimmer. I’m not about to test you now. I’m not  _ that _ much of a dick,”  Catra said. She was speaking between strained laughs, torn between finding the situation funny and the water highly uncomfortable.

“Come on,” Bow said. He was giving her his best puppy eyes, which fell flat on its face seeing as  Catra didn’t care for dogs.

“The Horde doesn’t sleep, and neither do we,” she replied. It was a rote reply, a reply she had memorised and used time and time again. Originally, it had been  _ Princesses _ never sleep, but it was easy enough to repurpose for her uses. “We’re making great progress, and that’s because we’re steaming ahead.”

“Besides,”  Catra continued, “Stabbing is mainly for gladius’. For your officer’s  sabre, you’ll want to swipe.”

Glimmer groaned.

\--- 

 

Scorpia lowered the bar to her chest as Adora’s fingers ghosted the edges. She was spotting her, which was an awkward scenario seeing as  Scorpia could lift much heavier weights than she could.

“Listen, I don’t know any more than you do,” Adora said.

“But,”  Scorpia panted between reps, “it just doesn’t add up.” She was bench pressing sixty kilograms and hardly making a sweat over it. The only issue with gyms were her claws - no matter how delicate she tried to be, she would scratch up the bars and sand off the textured areas until they didn’t provide enough grip to be comfortable. Luckily, she had her own specially-designed foam covers that she slipped over the bars and held on to while using them.

They were bright pink.

“I grabbed the sword, and I turned in to this giant woman. That’s all I know!” They were speaking in hushed whispers, the only other sounds being the grunts of soldiers and the clang of metal plates being dropped to the floor.

“Sounds like a rebellion trick. They can be  tricksy , those princesses.  _ Very  _ crafty.”

“A rebellion trick to set me free,” Adora said, “or were they not expecting it?” She left the question hang in the air for a moment and, when  Scorpia didn’t reply, continued on ahead. “Here’s what I’m thinking: maybe you’re right, and this is a rebellion trick. It’s possible! We can’t discount that, but we also can’t discount the possibility that we’re on to something serious here.”

Scorpia set the bar down with a delicate tap.

“Who else knows about this?”  Scorpia asked, and Adora winced slightly.

“The, uh,” she began, jerking her thumb upwards towards the ceiling, “higher-ups don’t know about this yet.” Scorpia bolted upright in her seat and turned to face her.

“That sounds like a bad idea, Adora!”

“I’m going to tell them! Just, you know, after this all works out. I don’t want to promise them something I can’t deliver.”

Scorpia sat on the edge of the bench and pouted.   
 “Ok, but I don’t like it. What’s the plan?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments are greatly appreciated!


End file.
